Alpha Preview Update (June)

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Password: lightningbug_june ⬅ ❗️

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

What's New:

• 25,000 words of new content!

• New Blade character interlude

• New Tallys character interlude

• New Caine character interlude

• Experience an awkward parenting moment when Caine raises questions about the birds and the bees

• Get Blade's self-control to crack a bit if you play your cards right (and if you're a Blademancer), as well as experience important revelations about his story

• Hang out with Tallys and her friends in an Elven teahouse and defend or debate her over clashing beliefs

• Multiple typo fixes and tweaks to past character interludes across the board; slight change to one of the endings in Chase's last interlude

Developer's Notes:

Ahhhhhh I ended up writing so much for the character interludes this time that I didn't have time to continue Chapter 9 this time! 🥹😭

Well, instead, you guys get chonky character interludes for Blade, Tallys, and Caine! This is the most I've written for a single update in a few months, and I'll probably continue the streak next month, since there are more character interludes I genuinely wanted to tackle but didn't have the time for!

Some things to note for this update:

• I'm side-eyeing certain romancey moments in Blade's interlude, because at its earliest, it should take place before MC even heads to Heth Macoll, but sometimes even the slow-burn romantic tension is too slow-burn for me, so I had to let him crack a little. We'll see if certain actions end up staying once the timing of everything has been worked out, but for now, it feels natural, and I really like the feel of it!

• Caine's interlude can read as extremely short if you just answer his question directly (though, to be fair, his interludes are always pretty straightforward and short). But if you decide to drag other people into the mess like the chaotic gremlin I know you can be, there's obviously lots more to explore! I'll probably never do that again for one of his interludes, though, 15 different scenarios was pretty brutal! 🙃

• Certain tea choices in Tallys's interlude can actually give you a +1 bonus to a stat, for all you min-maxers out there!

That's all I've got for this time! The Twine port is puttering along--we're in Wallmire now, so we're closing in on fully porting the main story, though I still have to manually convert and edit the day off and training interludes next--and I'm planning on settling in for the summer now that all the big travel plans are done! I'm getting the sense that this is going to be a 'monsoon-and-movies' kind of summer for us... we're getting some dust storms in the evenings, which hopefully preludes some nice rain later in the month, and during the day it's so swelteringly-hot that I predict we're going to be watching a lot of things in theaters just to get out of the house! Has anyone seen anything good recently?? I'm hotly anticipating the release of Longlegs, even though it looks terrifying... 🫠

Total wordcount: 1,159,849 words without code

What's Next:

Chase, Red, Ayla, and Briony are on my radar for the character interludes next: I wanted to get Chase done this month, but things happen in his next interlude, so I had to let that one cook until I had the time to do it justice. The other three will be simpler, but I don't know yet which one I'll end up finishing by the next update! Hopefully I'll be able to sneak some time to wrap up Chapter 9, but I go where the muse takes me, and if she wants me to do more character interludes right now, I can only oblige...

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 your June comes to a beautiful close!