Alpha Preview Update (July)

Play the alpha here

Password: hittingyou_hittingyouwithnewspaper ⬅ ❗️

Report bugs here

View bug reports here

Incomplete routes guide ⬅ ❗️please check if you suspect your game ended early :)

What's New:

• 17,000 words of new content!
• New Chase interlude
• The end of Chapter 9
• Finally initiate a friends-with-benefits sexual relationship with Chase, if you so choose! (Warning: steamy content in this route!)
• Confront High Augur Arameri with your findings and try to convince him to help you take down Sibella de Vespe!
• Corrected some game-breaking bugs in Chapter 7 and the last Caine interlude
• Minor tweaks throughout, including to Chase's previous character interlude
• Experimental addition/tweak to romance system

Developer's Notes:

PHEW! This month was a doozy, folks! But at least the update is finally done!!

Chase's interlude really took the wind out of my sails! Not only is it a whole-ass adventure (fitting for our prince of thieves, I suppose), but the branching for platonic MCs and FWB MCs got pretty crazy, and just emotionally it was a very intense thing to write: the sizzle and heat were off the charts for this one, and I had to do my best to make the moment they finally fall into each other's arms live up to all the build-up! I hope I did okay!

I always struggle with how explicit I want to make sexual content in this game. I can technically go way more explicit in terms of what I'm describing, but I'm never sure if the story actually needs that level of detail, plus there's all the branching and worrying about gender and body parts and preference variables. It's pretty hard to get into the flow of an intimate scene when you're trying to keep things general and not get so specific so as to offend someone with a description that doesn't fit their idea of their MC--and also, of course, there's the concern over age rating and people who don't want to see a certain level of explicitness... And also, according to Choice of Games, the app stores are pretty strict about the level of explicit content they allow, so that's another thing to consider! Maybe I'll do X-rated expanded smut scenes here on Patreon to get around those content ratings someday? 🤣 (Though don't necessarily hold your breath for that one...) In the end, I decided to keep the in-game scenes at about the level that all of the other steamy stuff in the game has been at, just a little more heated and intense for this time, because it's Chase and he and MC have been dancing around each other for longer than, say, Tallys and MC did before they got right to it. Why the men of ShoH always seem to dither around longer than the women, I don't really know...

Chapter 9 has a bit of an abrupt surprise ending, which I'll smooth out sometime when my brain doesn't feel like utter toast (the branching for that update, too, was absolutely frying!). It was always intended to end like that, but I'm sure I can do it a bit more elegantly in the future, lol. But hopefully you get the gist! I'm very excited that Chapter 9 is finally complete: that means we're finally moving into the double-digit chapters and the official slide towards the game's completion... We still have a ways to go, though!

(But yay, us! 1,200,000 words and 10 chapters completed! Who would have ever thought?!)

I fixed up some bugs here and there while I was at it, and thanks to one user's report, I tweaked the game's mechanics a bit in terms of the romance system: now, your "highest romance" can't be a gender that you're explicitly not attracted to. I.E., when you return home from Wallmire, say, the person who comes out to greet you (the person with the highest romance flags with you, usually, or one of your highest friends if not) can't be, like, Briony if you're a gay man who only likes men. That way some characters can't inadvertently eclipse scenes with your actual intended love interest, LOL. I haven't had a chance to actually test this new tweak out extensively, but it doesn't throw up any game-breaking bugs, so hopefully it's a seamless switchover. Let me know if that somehow isn't the case! It's very wonky, wobbly coding logic, so I wouldn't be surprised if it does something unexpected on me.

Finally, in other news, my fiance and I decided to do a 'no social media browsing, no video gaming, no junk food' sort of cleanse this month in solidarity with a friend who was giving it a try. I didn't really think much would come of it, but to my surprise, I waste a lot more time on Reddit than I realize... 🤔 Actually, I'm not sure if it's more of a time thing than it is a mental clarity thing, but whatever the case, to my surprise, I found myself breaking through a serious case of writer's block that I've been having on my second novel manuscript for the last few years!

I started the book back in 2019, shortly after I wrapped up the first draft of WE HAVE ALWAYS BEEN HERE, had a good spurt of inspiration for it then, and then fell off the wagon and have been wrestling madly with it ever since. It's actually been a very unhappy experience, because I'd pick up the remnants of what I had and poke miserably at it for a bit before giving up and putting it away again, worrying and fretting all the while. I burned that book to the ground and started over 4 or 5 times! (Which is nothing new with me, to be fair: I did that with WHABH, too.)

But for whatever reason, this month I suddenly had a breakthrough, and I've been writing ShoH or doing the Twine conversion during the days, and then writing the New Book during the nights LOL. I'm sort of writing on double-shifts, which is new for me, but very exciting considering the stagnancy the story has suffered from all this time! This is also the first new "IP" (and not just an AU) I've been really excited about in years, and the first new blorbos that I've really fallen in love with (but am still getting to know, unlike the toughened veterans of the Shepherds) in a long time, so it all sort of feels new and vulnerable and unnerving (who are these creatures? what are they going to do next? i genuinely don't know), but it's also very fun. One thing that's been interesting to notice is that I used to be known for my perfectionism with my writing; with both the original Shepherd novels and WHABH, I edited as I wrote, picking and chiseling at a snail's pace as I got everything in the first draft just right, which resulted in a years-long writing process but a nonexistent editing phase, as I pretty much would turn in a polished final product by the time I was done. This is not really how things are done, but it's what I became known for...

However, working on Shepherds (the game) has naturally caused my writing to evolve for the better! I've now gotten used to writing a certain output of words every month and not really needing to worry about getting it exactly perfect, knowing that we're in alpha phase and there will be time to polish things up later; the important thing is getting the story out now. Thanks to that, I'm able to make this New Book flow all the more briskly, though I'm also doing it with the absolute least amount of planning I've ever done for a novel series of mine. No outlines, no guiding plot charts, head empty, vibes only, kitchen sink of cool stuff slapdashed together, and let's just see what happens. Anyway, I will keep rotating that story around in the microwave of my head while working on Shepherds, which is still my absolute first priority, and pray that the momentum keeps up! Wish me luck! 🌟

That's all I have for this time! I'm a bit nervous about this update, so I very much hope you enjoy it! 🥹 Thanks for your patience and support as always, and I hope you're staying cool and hydrated!

Total wordcount: 1,177,050 words without code

What's Next:

More character interludes (can't say whose yet), and more cleaning up past incomplete routes, like the Ascendancy Festival and some birthdays we've missed. As I've mentioned in past updates, this will officially be my new focus as I get all of the character interludes and past content up to speed before moving into Chapter 10 and beyond, just to make everything lines up properly before we enter the pre-endgame phase.

Thank you for reading, everyone, and I hope you enjoy! As always, please feel free to leave your thoughts here, on Discord, or on Tumblr, and I hope you have a fantastic last weekend of July!