Progress Report 2021.05.31

Hi friends,

Happy end-of-May! I hope everyone has had a good month.

May has been quite successful for me, all things considered. While I did want to be closer to the end of Chapter 1, I did complete and code all of the investigation sequences and the lead up to the MC’s final decision.

As of right now, the alpha build contains (in addition to pre-existing material):

• The Viridian Lady sequence
• Chapter 1 Route B Cove investigation (which is different content from the Cove on Route A)
• Chapter 1 Route B Edgewater investigation (which is different content from Edgewater on Route A)
• Visiting the Guild in Deadwood
• A scene where the MC puts all their information together and decides where the chalice is
• A couple new codex entries

This is about 109,000 words of new content since the month of February, which I’d say isn’t too shabby! The average route is, of course, quite a bit shorter than this. Unfortunately, I can’t generate an average word count for the Chapter, but the vast majority of the Chapter’s bulk comes from differences in variations as each location splits at least twice into multiple branches.

I am now writing the Route B endgame, which is quite a relief after working on the bulk of the chapter for so long. I have all of the scenes outlined and planned, and have finished the first little bit of the scene where the MC finds the chalice.

June is going to be just as busy as May. I am really hoping to have a full Chapter 1 launch by the end of the month, which means I have my work cut out for me. I am hopeful that I can pull this off, but I still have around 30k of writing and coding to do. Some of it will be editing previous content to adjust for new continuity and taking parts that already exist and changing a few things about them, but there’s still a lot of brand new material that needs to be created. Because of this, bonus content will continue to be on pause.

I am also going to be opening up playtester applications tomorrow. Because of the amount of variations in Route B, I’ve been feeling the need to expand the playtester team for a while and make sure all of the differences are covered.

Because I am unable to generate an average words per playthrough, I’ve decided that average playtime is more helpful to new players than word count. When Chapter 1 is complete I am going to be asking playtesters to time their playthroughs and get a general sense of how long it takes them to complete the chapter. I will be opening this to patrons as well! An average playtime will be derived from there.

I was hoping to be working on Chapter 2 and 3 during the summer. I have completed part of my in-depth Chapter 2 outline, but I am keeping it on the backburner while I wrap up Chapter 1. Hopefully I’ll be ready to dive into it in July! Some exciting plans for Chapter 2:

• The MC and Aeran’s arrival in Velantis doesn’t go according to plan and Zenaida is mad about it
• Political Intrigue x 1000
• Zenaida’s father is having a party and she and her mother aren’t happy about it
• Meet Mel, except he’s masquerading as someone else and he’s a little annoyed (and intrigued) that the MC can see right through his disguise
• A major conversation with Aeran about the Spire
• Name your sword and choose its history (Wayfarer weapons all have a legacy)
• Unlock Aeran’s romance flag (or not…)
• "Fun" options for if Aeran’s at low approval

This is a tentative plan for June and the beginning of summer development:

• June 1 – Open playtester applications through Discord
• June 12 – Closed playtester applications and contact chosen applicants
• June 15 – Chapter 1 complete (fingers crossed)
• June 15 – June 28 – Playtesting and lead-up to public launch. Hopefully I can get out one bonus content piece during this time (it will be one of the topics voted on last month and not the Mel short story). However, I am going to be expanding to Twitter/IG and other social media platforms during this time, so I have a lot of content to produce for those in the lead-up and I’m not sure if I’ll be able to make a bonus content post during this time.
• June 29 – Tentative Launch Date
• July 1 – Start work on Chapter 2
• July 12-15– Add the first section of Chapter 2 to the alpha build

Patreon Updates

I will be updating the Patreon tiers sometime in the next few days. When I started my Patreon, I wasn’t really sure how much time it would take me to do cover certain benefits. I’ve since learned that 4 bonus content pieces per month is far, far too much content for me to generate without game development being affected.

Going forwards, there will only be 1 bonus content piece per month and this bonus content will be for the Apprentice tier and above. Because of the amount of time and work they take, writing commissions will become a benefit for the Grandmaster tier and above.

I will also be adjusting some of the other benefits to make time management and my workload easier for me. I will release a post going over all the changes, but if you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to reach out!

As an aside, I’ve changed the weekly update tag to progress report because my updates are now occurring once every two weeks.

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