[UPDATE] Demo ver 2.8 is finally live!
Added 2023-03-01 01:50:46 +0000 UTCHi, everyone! Hope you're staying safe and healthy.
Demo ver 2.8, featuring the new content for this month, has finally been uploaded to dashingdon. This update (24.5k words) contains the next segment of the Kantena arc, bringing us very close to the arc's conclusion. It features a lengthy and wide-spanning combat segment towards the end, which I'm very proud of - I think it might be the most satisfied I have been with a combat scene since the climactic fight against Sister in Book 1. However, the sheer size of the segment is such that I haven't been able to complete it in full with the amount I'm able to write this month. Currently, I have completed one of the two main paths. The other will likely be the focus of the next update, along with a proper denouement of the Kantena arc, hence officially bringing it to a close.
This new update also fixes a couple of errors that emerged in the last version, chiefly of Ilya's letter-reading scene showing up unprompted when you begin a new game (my apologies for the oversight, and the long response time!). Furthermore, I would also like to apologize for the lack of weekly updates this month, as development of this update have been frustratingly erratic. That is, I was able to write very little during the first half of the month, despite having devoted a lot of time to it, though thankfully I was able to meet the desired wordcount within these last few days. I felt ashamed that I was making so little progress and not following AMR's usual development rhythm, and the thought of writing devlogs about it filled me with a lot of trepidation. That being said, I realize now that the behavior was very unprofessional, and I will do my best to become more transparent with you whether or not development is going well. Thank you for bearing with me, and for your patience all this time.
We'll be back in March with our usual slew of offerings: a full-sized update (~25k words), various art rewards, and devlogs + sneak peeks starting Saturday, March 11th. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy the new update.
Click here to play Demo ver 2.8!
Thank you as always for your patience, and for supporting the development of A Mage Reborn!
Comments
Thank you for your kind words! Combat scenes are always my personal favorite to write. I typically watch Soulslike games Lets Plays to get inspiration prior to writing my second pass on them, and I find that it helps make the end product much more action-packed than the first pass. I'm very glad that that has translated! And thank you for letting me know about F's greyed-out choice--I'll look into that today.
adam rifky
2023-03-19 00:47:20 +0000 UTCThis was a great update! It's really tricky to write fight scenes that are engaging without being convoluted, but you deliver every time! I'm really excited to read the ercei spells side of the fight next update! Also, I think F's day off scene was added last update, but it still says it's in progress and is greyed out and unselectable for me.
Platina
2023-03-13 03:57:58 +0000 UTCHi, I definitely understand where you're coming from. I will try my best to describe F's thought process on this. F has a long history of success with Nightsaber and has immense trust in the agents' capabilities, and so had reason to believe that what risks there are to the children are minuscule. (The agents screwing things up will be addressed in the future.) This is compounded by the fact that Nightsaber had been the one to save them from Kantena, and so there is an implicit expectation on F's behalf that Nightsaber will have no problem defeating this iteration. What hesitation and conflict they had arose not from doubting Nightsaber's chances of success, but for the act of placing the children at risk at all. However, the inherent immorality of the act also had to be weighed against the potential of dismantling the operation entirely. In that sense, it becomes a bit of a trolley problem, with the element of chance mixed in; that is, would they be able to slightly risk the few to stand a better chance of saving the many? F had been able to reason to themselves that because the risk is virtually zero, this had been the best path forward. I tried my best to communicate that making the choice heavily disturbs and distresses them, but one they feel they must make. They had witnessed their closest friends dying because Arcadia wasn't able to get to them in time, and so it becomes of paramount importance that information surrounding the current operation is gathered quickly and comprehensively enough that none need repeat the same fate. This is the primary motive that drove them to act as they had. The reason why the duke is not immediately killed/taken for answers is because it is well known to his stewards, his household, and presumably his political allies that he is currently contracting the Archangel, and has allowed the agents into his keep. As such, killing/abducting the duke will virtually dismantle the Archangels' entire operation, and place the Arcadian agents that are part of his network at risk. In this case, F and Yu's primary concerns are not the agents themselves (as they are professional agents who chose to shoulder an occupational risk), but for the fact that their discovery (and the Archangel being neutralized) would heavily cripple Arcadian operations (such as the ones that saved F, and a variety of other feats mentioned both in-game and outside). It had been judged--with great conflict and disagreement--that the best path forward, and the one that will likely save the most amount of people in the long run, would be to turn the children in to the duke. But the moment that plan fell through, all bets were off, and it was agreed that the children had to be retrieved at all costs. The Archangel's operation will be dismantled as a result of this--I recall having written about it in the update, possibly nested in a choice that not everybody saw--but the fallout will be explored more heavily in a couple of updates from now. I completely understand if you still find the decision irredeemable, but I hope I was able to shed a bit of light as to why F had been written how they were.
adam rifky
2023-03-11 21:55:49 +0000 UTCSorry, this is going to be a bit of a negative one. I really don't like how Y and F came off in this update. The plan where they send children to a torturer as live bait is so awful and irredeemable to me that it instantly puts F at the bottom of my list just for pushing for it and I'm not sure if that was the intended effect. I'm also not sure what it was intended to accomplish that they couldn't do some other way? If they were just going to kill the duke after they got his answers anyway, why not just kidnap him with the paralysis venom and have Tahlia read his mind for the information? The plan with the children comes off to me as needlessly cruel and dangerous and F, knowing what it's like to have been that child, being all for sending kids back into the torture cave pushing for it comes off really unsympathetic. I liked the combat, I liked the antagonist reveals and the new uses of phantasma but Arcadia's plan and F's part in it really soured my opinion on that faction and character.
Alexys Kerr
2023-03-09 22:29:29 +0000 UTC
