[Episode 1.15, week 4] Back on track

Hey guys! Sorry for the late report, some unplanned chaos came up yesterday. But I had a much better week of writing last week, and I’m back in it today.  Here's a quick update.

Part of the solution involved zooming out and thinking about how episode 1.15 fits into the overall story structure, and I thought it might be interesting to share some of my thinking on that. For me, the most exciting part of the story is actually its next phase, when the heroine is fully undercover in the bargirl role.

I know that some people in the community are worried that we won’t be able to keep it interesting once that threshold is crossed. But I’ve got loads of scenes and scenarios that I’m excited about creating in the game engine.

The problem is that the story isn’t ready for that leap yet – our heroine needs to take a few more steps before she can believably walk (or get pushed) through that door. The next few episodes are about walking her up to the "road of trials".

That's the phase where the heroine is trying to balance being a highly trained intelligence officer with being a working prostitute without losing her mind or blowing her cover, and to me it's the most interesting part of the whole story.

It's also the part where we can loosen the reins on the player.  Right now everything feels linear because we're trying to manoeuvre all the pieces into alignment to make the next bit work: once we get there, we can release lots of shorter, self-contained scenarios that you can pick and choose between.

But we're not there yet, and we have to work through a couple of events to get us there.  I'm gonna eat lunch then get back to working on it!  I hope you guys have a greta week and I'll report back on progress this weekend.