Guard Name (Poll) and ShoH Update

Hi everyone, I don't have too much to update you on vis-à-vis the game this week! I've been busy preparing for my partner's birthday (I baked him a cake intended to look like the one in Mario 64 and boy was it a labor) and catching up on work after the holiday break and handling miscellaneous ShoH things, like organizing prizes for the winners of the holiday contest and writing back and forth with the various artists we have in the commission rotation, or updating the public demo, as you might have seen!

One thing I am aware of is that I'm not sure of the order of the upcoming chapters for the game. I originally intended for the next chapter to feature the return of the guard you may or may not have kissed in the prologue (and Croelle), with Lavinet, Tallys, Halek, and potentially Briony featuring heavily in that mission (set in Haven); after that would be the chapter with "the boys" (Blade, Trouble, Red, and Chase) journeying to a swamp town being plagued by serial killings, where they would also run into Mimir (who's going to join the Order again, probably). 

For various reasons, the placement of these chapters cause issues with the pacing of the overall story, no matter which way they're placed. One solution might be to throw in an additional chapter into the mix, as I've discussed before, but I'm sort of dry on what sort of mission would feature in that chapter; it might have to be a tiny mission to indicate that time has passed, because I can't really think of a kind of plotline that hasn't already been covered! 

Or I'll just swallow the pacing flaws and go with my gut, which is that the "boys'" mission to the swamp town, Wallmire (which you voted on!) will be next. 

In either case, I'm thinking about ShoH in most of my waking moments, as you can probably tell by my ramble, lol. Another thing is that this next update will probably see us returning to Chapter 4 and finishing up those paths in the Reach that include Mekduk and actually facing off with the fourth Faceless Lord, who kind of got the short end of the stick in terms of... sinisterness. And, of course, I hope to complete Riel and Tallys and Briony's next day off scenes, but that's a stretch goal!

Some other things I've added to the alpha build (that I just forgot I did until now) is making Zori's gender determined by the player, not randomly, and having the ability to pick up some small souvenirs when you travel outside of Haven, including one for Caine in Heth Macoll. Thanks, Tumblr person who gave me the idea!

And of course, I'm also working on the short story for this month! I won't go into spoilers, but Chandry won the vote, and... it's going to get kind of wild, lol!

In the meantime, I've got another name poll for you! In my head I call him "Guard-kun," but we need an actual name for that guard you encounter outside of Haven's gates if you decided not to ignore Caine at Ebert's behest. He is a minor returning character and he deserves a name, darn it!

What do you think Guard-kun's name should be?