Games by JimD Newsletter – Safe Haven updates, Stories from the Outbreak!

Welcome to my 62nd newsletter! It's Thanksgiving soon, and I look forward to a few days off from my regular job. That means I'll have more time to write and fix errors from previous Safe Haven chapters. I appreciate all of your patience as I continue to troubleshoot and update Part 3. I've genuinely appreciated those of you who have messaged me with issues and errors and those who have even provided suggestions for how to fix them. In this day and age of game development, players are more willing to accept the bugs, but I cringe when I see some of the mistakes I've made. I will release another big patch by the end of this month and plan to spend the next week or so preparing it.

I also have a new release of content coming. I'll talk more about that below, but these will be short stories about key characters in Safe Haven. These may not appeal to everyone, but I hope many of you will be interested in these stories.

This month in the newsletter, like always, I will provide updates on my games and info on upcoming releases. Let's get started.

Zombie Exodus: Safe Haven, Part 4

Part 4 is currently at 200,000 words, over 15,000 more this month. I will be reaching my standard of 20,000 words per month. I've started Chapter 14 and set up the chapter's framework. It will look like the following:

• Awaken at the junkyard.
• Interlude with your main RO. Each one will be several thousand words. If you do not have an RO, you will have a separate scene for the start of the day.
• Breakfast starts. You will have the option to speak to members of the group at the junkyard.
• Mission time. You will pick from a number of missions and activities and join other characters on them. This will be the bulk of chapter 14. I provided the list of missions in last month's newsletter.

Also, if you have not tried chapter 13 in Part 4, below is the link to the public beta.

https://moody.ink/play/jimd/zombie-exodus-safe-haven-part-4-public-beta/mygame/

People may be confused by my choice to host betas on Moody instead of DashingDon. Moody has the latest version of Choicescript, while DashingDon does not. I use features from the latest version of Choicescript makes my current more efficient. Inefficient code leads to extra words of content that inflate the word count and make the game seem longer than it is. I like to give as accurate a word count as possible so people understand what they are paying for. Choice of Games also charges for word count. The higher the word count, the more they charge. This is one of the reasons each Part of Safe Haven remains around the $5 mark while others that seem shorter are priced higher. I don't fault other authors who do not use more advanced features of Choicescript, but I want to make you aware of my goals when writing and coding.

Stories from the Outbreak

I will soon release a new addition to Safe Haven called Stories from the Outbreak. This addition will include 9 noninteractive short stories based on popular characters. These stories share important events in the lives of such characters as Rachel, Madison and Brody, Reilly and Nora, and even your nephew. Some will even include original artwork.

These stories come from the work I've done for Patreon. These stories have been included in my Patreon for over two years; however, only several hundred people have read them. Many more people will read them once they exist in the app. These stories will be taken down at the end of this month. If you would like to read them on my Patreon, here are links to the stories:

• Finn Meets the Makarovs 
• Lopez, After Chapter 1 
• Madison and Brody After SNOW-A-PALOOZA 
• Nephew and the Battle on the Hill 
• Rachel, Start of the Outbreak
• Reilly and Nora
• Sifer, Revenge of the Zombie Slayer
• Tommy at Milford Estates
• A Prayer (and a Rifle) for Woody

Stories from the Outbreak will be an optional download for a nominal fee. For those who have read these stories or do not want to read noninteractive stories, there is no need to purchase them. They are only available for those interested in the backstories of these specific characters. I hope more people will enjoy them. I will also be writing more original stories starting next year. As always, my patrons will vote on the characters and topics of those short stories.

Vampire: The Masquerade — Out for Blood

My editors at World of Darkness/Paradox Interactive have finally approved the True Faith patch for Out for Blood! Based on the Choice of Games schedule, they hope to release the update in January or February of 2023. I'll be excited to see what people think about the new content, which adds over 20,000 new words for free to the story.

That’s all for this month. Until next time, stay safe, and thank you for your support!