Alpha Preview Update (November)

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Password: sorry_for_the_cliffhanger

Bug Reports

Incomplete Routes

Shepherds of Haven Development Log

Content Added: 

• 13,000 words of new content

• Chapter 10 (well, really 11) begins!

Changelog:

Critical Fixes

• Fixed a bug that caused Blade's festival souvenir to show up, even at the beginning of new play files. This should be resolved, but only if you start a new file from scratch. On old files, his festival souvenir may still show up in your room, even if you didn't go with him to the Ascendancy Festival. This shouldn't be a big deal, though, and again can be resolved by starting a new play file!

• In the interest of not gaslighting/Mandela Effect-ing players, I will say that I had to swap around the chronology of the Wild Hunt with St. Balthazar's Day in the calendar. So those calendar docs are different as of this update!

Miscellaneous Notes: 

• As always, hard refreshing your game may help load these new bug fixes if you don't find them implemented on your side.

Notes

Hi everyone! This is a fairly straightforward update... Chapter 10 is here! It's... not going to be as long as some other chapters... for reasons you will probably intuit by the end of this update... I'm so sorry. I've been putting off starting this chapter for some time, but it had to be done! But rest assured that all questions will be answered eventually! I do have a plan!

Not much to say this time; this month was busy with the usual wedding planning, novel writing, and miscellaneous other shenanigans. I randomly decided that I was the type to assemble a huge cookie box for Thanksgiving this year, despite not having baked any other cookie besides a chocolate chip in my life, so we'll see how that goes... and I've been taking some time to paint a bit more, too!

Subscribers of the Captain tier and higher voted that Haven University should be the next story I port to Twine, and I've already been sketching out the UI in my head in my scant free time. I predict it will take me some time to get things up and running, but I also found this SugarCube tool, which simulates texting on a phone, and now my brain is vibrating with excitement imagining how much fun it would be to get real-time texts from the characters while playing the story!! *cue Chase spamming the game notification alert as he texts you incessantly asking if you're coming to get pizza*

I think that's all I have for now! If I'm feeling beneficent, Chapter 10 will continue next month; if not, an Ascendancy Festival interlude for one of the other characters is more likely. I'll be traveling out of town the week of Christmas, so it just depends on what I manage to get done before the end-of-year holiday mayhem hits!

As we head into (US) Thanksgiving tomorrow, I'd just like to take a moment to extend my sincere thanks to you guys, as always. Every year, I find myself reflecting how profoundly grateful I am for this community and your support. Your kindness, curiosity, enthusiasm, patience, and encouragement are what keep this story going, and I'm so lucky to have the opportunity to share this world and these characters with such a thoughtful and supportive community of readers and fans. Thank you so much for everything! Every kind message, excited reaction, silly joke, funny meme, and creative fanwork you send means more than you know. 💕

I hope you all get some warm rest, good food, and happy times as we move into closing out the year!

Estimated total wordcount: 1,392,000 words