Saturday Devlog (August 20)

Hi, everyone! Happy Saturday once again, hope you're all staying safe and healthy :)

If there was ever any doubt that I'm bad—god-awful, actually—at estimating how much airtime each arc will require, this week will have put those doubts to rest. I knocked out another 8k words of the update this week, roughly around what I expected to put out wordcount-wise. In that sense, the update is coming along quite nicely...

However, inexplicably, I've yet to make it out of the interlude scene!

There's a lot of lateral variation that I greatly underestimated during the storyboard phase, with the biggest factors being how the mage is remembered, and to whom they had sent the letter in Book 1. These variants can make a single choice fork have a couple thousand words' worth of total content, which unfortunately cuts into the amount of story progression I'd hoped to be able to get done this week. I do think it adds a cool nuance to the scenes that make the interlude a lot truer to the reader's choices and roleplay philosophies, but not getting to write the next arc sooner is also making me feel rather antsy, haha. It's an odd feeling!

(While we're here...confession: I miss writing action scenes so much that I snuck in a bit of it into Ilya's interlude scene (as a choice; meaning that players can skip the 'fight' scene entirely, if they so choose). It's a little out of character for her, if I'm being honest, but I figured some readers would appreciate a bit of a workout during Book 2's biggest angst-fest. I certainly had fun writing it!)

But I've digressed. Currently we're on track to a roughly ~23-25k word update this month, though as you've probably surmised, I'm not quite sure yet where that will land us story-wise. My hope is that the update will wrap up the entirety of the interlude and include the first couple of scenes of the next arc. Given how this intended-to-be 10k-word interlude has since ballooned to be a full-length chapter, though, there's a rather sizable chance that my estimates may miss the mark again. I hope you understand T_T

As for AMR's bonus goodies, artwork has finally begun to filter in, and I'm very happy with how things are progressing. Particularly exciting is the monthly feature for August, which consists of full-body chibi artwork of AMR's main cast (including gender variations!) These will be done by Yesa, who did the art for AMR's anniversary and the 100k-views-celebration, and I can't wait to share her work with you!

A side story is also currently in the works, with the focus being on Eli this time around. Writing is still in its earliest stages as the update takes priority, but we should still make good time with it regardless.

Lastly, a sneak peek will go up shortly after this devlog! It will feature a deeper look into Ilya's interlude scene, much of which, in true AMR fashion, will be told through flashback sequences. Please look forward to it!

And that about wraps it up for this week's update. As always, thank you for supporting the development of A Mage Reborn!