Progress Report 2021.09.16

Hi friends,

The game’s been out for a week! It’s been a pretty wild time, and I’m overwhelmed by the response it’s gotten. The game has stayed in the top 10 for all of its major tags and has been averaging around 1000 browser plays per day, which is incredible. Gob-smacked doesn’t even reach what I’m feeling right now. 😅

I wanted to say a big welcome to all the new Patrons! Thank you so much for supporting the game, I’m so happy to see you here! 💗

September Creator Q & A

In case you missed it, this month I am planning on doing a Q&A. However, I need questions in order to do one! If you’d like to participate, please submit your questions to either the comments of this post here or to the form here.

I was originally going to close submissions on September 20, but I’ll extend it to Saturday, September 25.

Game Patch

I released a patch today for both the public and alpha builds that fix some minor bugs, HTML errors, and general typos and spelling/grammar mistakes.

Also, if you’d like to help the game’s analytics, leaving a rating on the public build helps me out a lot with itch.io’s algorithm (do I sound like a YouTube… 😅). 💗

Alpha Updates

I have started writing Chapter 2! 🥳 I finished my in-depth outline a few days ago and work has commenced. Chapter 2 is much more linear than Chapter 1, so developing its material is going to be a much shorter process than before.

Chapter 2 only has 4 scenes. While there is choice and variation, there is no investigation/exploration sections, so it won’t fan out the same way that Chapter 1 does. 

Scene 3 includes a party scene where the MC will have a chance to meet Melchior (a companion character), Phaedra (a potential romance interest), both of Zenaida's parents, and various Guild of Mages members. 👀

My hope is to finish writing and coding all of Chapter 2 by mid-November.

This is the tentative plan:

• September 16 – 26: Write Scene 1
• September 27 – October 10: Write Scene 2
• Sometime around October 10: Code Scenes 1 & 2 and update the alpha build with Chapter 2 content
• October 11 – 25: Write Scene 3
• October 25 – November 9: Write Scene 4
• November 10 – 16: Code and update the alpha build

After Chapter 2, the game splits down three routes, meaning that there will be three versions of Chapter 3. I would like to get the alpha to a place where it is at least one chapter ahead of the public build. If all goes according to plan, I will be working on the three Chapter 3s throughout November, December and January, and then releasing Chapter 2 publicly sometime in early January (around New Year).

The three versions of Chapter 3 may not be quite fully finished by then, but I don’t want to leave the public build inactive for too long while it’s still in its infancy.

Thank you all so much for your support! 💗