Weekly Update | August 31st, 2025

Brothers and Sisters and Siblings,

Chapter 2 has been scribed, illuminated, and delivered. The first draft of it anyway. I imagine there will be a lot of stuff to revise and fix over the coming month, and there is an entire short subplot I have tentatively decided to move from Chapter 3 to Chapter 2 (or at least part of it to set up and foreshadow some things to come). That subplot might be coming in the Scribe release of the game in two weeks, or the Acolyte one after that.

But while there is still some revision work to be done for Chapter 2, what I'm really looking forward to is starting on Chapter 3, which has been slowly taking shape in my mind for some time now. Unlike Chapters 1 and 2, which I sort of dove into without really knowing what I'm doing, and during the making of which I had to figure how to code, to animate, and do all the basic things a visual novel maker needs to know how to do, I am going into Chapter 3 older and wiser (by about 6 months, but still). Now that certain routine tasks have become second nature, I can focus more on the writing, and I'm hoping that's going to produce some good results.

In any case, let's get to it.

What I did this week:

• Finished Chapter 2. The ending of the chapter has a complicated structure, code-wise, so it took some time to figure out whether all the puzzle pieces come together correctly. I'm still not 100% sure but I'll have my lovely Cantors to help me figure it out. My thanks in advance.

• Made big Android optimizations. I think I finally understand how Ren'py categorizes game variants, and so I really think I cracked the issues the game was having. I also bought a cheap Motorola to be able to test game versions, and it's giving me some solace that the game seems to work well on my phone. I hope that translates to different Android models.

• Updated the Itch demo with Tidesday (second day of the week). Now even those playing for free get to barge in on Jude and watch Soren throw a tantrum in linguistics class.

What I plan to do next week:

• Respond to what I am sure is to be an onslaught of bug reports from my Cantors (and perhaps Android users on Itch), and provide hotfixes in (hopefully) good time.

• Go back to some inconsistencies that have already been reported to me and fix them.

• Decide if and how much of the previously mentioned subplot I want to include in Chapter 2, and then execute that.

• Start on Chapter 3!

That's all from me! Have a great week ahead, and remember to put your name down on the vestry door if you need to wash your robes. The waiting list is over a week now (mostly because Brother Elias has his name down in all available slots).