Alpha Preview Update (August)

Play the alpha here

Password: summerstorms ⬅ ❗️

Report bugs here

View bug reports here

Incomplete routes guide [NEW]

What's New

• 27,000 words of new content to Chapter 8
• Tweaks and corrections to past chapters, like Chapter 7
• Prototype of new romance flag calculation

Developer's Notes

Whoo boy, do I have a whopper of a giant update for you! 😩😮‍💨 I wasn't expecting to write quite so much for one update like this, but the words were just flowing out of me, so I decided to blast through as much of Chapter 8 as I could while the momentum was still high! 

There is a LOT happening in this update, so hopefully the rapidfire changes being introduced in the plot make sense at first glance! I have mixed feelings about the pacing right now, so I'm sticking a big [first draft] label on this update: I was concentrating more on simply getting the gist of things written down as fast as I could--hitting the major plot beats and kind of sketching out the outline of things-- than I was about filling in all of the little details and reactions (especially with trying to write 11 different versions of the scene where MC wakes up. What a pain in the ass! Why did I invent so many characters again?!). If you saw my reblog on Tumblr about using the <get there> method in writing and not getting too hung up on getting everything exactly perfect, that's basically what I did with this update. It's my <get there>, lol, and while I'm going to leave a lot of the more personal conversations and MC's emotional reactions to player headcanon and off-screen implications, I will likely have to go back to this section sometime to fine-tune some things and slow the plot down a bit. So please take that into consideration as you read! 🥲 It's a first draft!!!

A couple important things to note with this update:

• If you are a Redmancer and he came to greet you when you returned from Lockwood in Chapter 7, you will almost certainly run into a bug involving the variable (reddate) by the time the Ascendancy Festival rolls around! This is because I was expecting the festival to be in Chapter 7 initially, so I had to move a variable from that scene somewhere else so it could be remembered in Chapter 8. To avoid this bug, you must start a file from scratch and either play all the way through, jump ahead to Chapter 7, or jump ahead to Chapter 8. If you simply load up your current save on Chapter 8, it will produce this bug! There is no "fix" for this other than restarting your game, so you don't need to report it on the bug report form, either. 😅 Sorry for the inconvenience!
• Per the new incomplete routes guide (link above), continuing the route where you are possessed by Quiial is currently not written for Chapter 8. In addition, if you fail to meet the requirements of being asked to become commander, the game will skip ahead to the Ascendancy Festival!
• A user alerted me to an issue where, if you're romancing more than one person and had a complete tie between them in terms of romance flags (say if Trouble and Chase had an exact equal number of romance flags), the game wouldn't know how to label who was "highest" (AKA who your "main" RO should be) and would default to someone else entirely. I have jury-rigged a new system that should account for "ties" by deciding between them randomly. I tried to test it rigorously, and I am hopeful that it works just fine, but if you notice anything funky going on with your main RO ought to be, that might be why! Try restarting your game, clearing your browser cache, or using the quickbuild. If you continue to see inconsistencies, let me know in the comments, on Discord, or in the bug report form!
• [Edit]: whoopsie, there were some issues with my upload--using the quickbuild now correctly leads to your vision rather than waking up at the compound, and you can now also toggle on whether the Shepherds know the truth about your past and the Words of Power in the quickbuild as well!

Total wordcount (without code): 839,028 words without code

What's Next

Next month, I plan to tackle more of Chapter 8, with Lavinet's first day off scene as a stretch/bonus goal! As a PS so I don't get anyone's hopes up: I will 99% be skipping the Ascendancy Festival scenes themselves because I don't currently feel equipped to write 11 different versions of such a big sequence. I will someday, of course, but right now I want to write as much of the main plot as possible without bogging myself down with so many variations--just look at how long it took me to write only 4 of the guys' room-sharing scenes in Chapter 7, and those were significantly shorter than what I plan for the festival! So sorry for any disappointment and thank you for your patience! 🥹

I ran myself a bit ragged this month with trying to write so much of the update as well as resume work on my next novel, as well as taking on editorial work as the next guest editor of EPOCH. I've also been in conversation with multiple artists for future goodies, have been trying to plug away at some coding for the Twine version of the game (converting 800,000 words is a daunting task lol...), and we hopefully might be in contact with someone whose involvement with the game could be very exciting (I won't say too much until more is set in stone, but it's to do with music)! 😁 So right now, I'm feeling a bit exhausted and fragile: my brain is whirring and making that burnt plastic smell that your laptop fan makes when it's been working on too many programs, lol... I'm going to take a little bit of a break tonight and then get back to the last part of Mimir's short story tomorrow! My partner recently got a Steam Deck so I downloaded Pathfinder: Kingmaker and it was so hard 🥹 My itty-bitty peanut brain couldn't take it, so now I'm trying out KOTOR for the first time! We're also playing Alan Wake!

Anyway, that's all for now: I hope you enjoy the update and look forward to seeing your thoughts! ❤️ Have a great start to your week and to your September!