Games by JimD Newsletter – Game Progress, Q&A

Happy Halloween! This is one of my favorite seasons of the year. Growing up, I would spend the week ahead of 10/31 watching horror movies, usually one of the George Romero zombie flicks while eating sickening amounts of candy. This year, I am re-watching the 1978 Dawn of the Dead. I’ll also be writing about zombies, so I think that counts.

In this newsletter, I will give updates on my games and answer questions from my followers.

Zombie Exodus: Safe Haven

This month, I was able to make some progress on Part 2-2, specifically a new mission by Ethan Underhill. The good news is that I will be freed up of other projects in early November and can devote my time to ZESH. My goal is to finish Part 2-2 in December and turn it in to Hosted Games. Depending on their production queue, it could be released any time thereafter. Once I have any feedback from them, I will share it with you.

For my supporters on Patreon, I also am publishing a short story telling the story of Jaime as he is chased by Dillan and his gang into Chipper Ridge High School prior to be saved by the main character in chapter 3 of Safe Haven.

The Choice Game Formerly Known as Vampire Fiction

The name, Vampire Fiction, is no more! My editor suggested we change the name, so we came up with a number of options. I ran a two-day poll for my followers on Patreon, Facebook, and Twitter, who voted on their top picks. The highest three vote-getters are:

• Death Is My Beginning
• In the Sun’s Shadow
• A New Existence

FableLabs will be producing three variant covers of the game, one with each title, to see how they look. Once that happens in November, I will likely run another poll to choose the final title.

Aside from names and cover art, the technical team at FableLabs is debugging Episodes 1-2. Apparently, their software was not used to the size and complexity of my writing style, so my files broke their system. They fixed the issues and used my game to validate it. I expect to begin playtesting their system on Monday.

Zombie Exodus: Dead Zone

No news, though once Part 2-2 is sent to Hosted Games, I plan to code chapter 1 of Dead Zone. Our plan is still to finish by Summer, 2019.

In other Ethan news, he has written two short horror stories to share on Patreon in the coming months.

Q&A

Have you ever considered or tried working with other authors from chooseyourstory.com like endmaster?

Though I have read some of the stories over at CYS, in many ways, the community there is very much separate from our CoG community. Therefore, I don’t know many of the top writers there. Would I be willing to collaborate with them? Yes. I am currently so busy with collaborators from the CoG community, I don’t know when I could open my schedule to others. So far, I am already considering projects with Vendetta, Lucid, and Eric Moser, as well as already working on games with David Monster, Ethan Underhill, Mia, and Brittany Martin. I would like to one day write with Sam Kabell (Unnatural) and Allen Gies (Tin Star). With all of the talented writers in the CoG community, it is tough to consider collaborating with outside writers at least for the foreseeable future.

There's this one random scene I don't remember when I got it but I've had a screenshot of it for a long time describing a zombie in a green and orange flannel shirt and a "chasmal hole" in his stomach, it mentioned that he wasn't a zombie the last time you saw him but I don't remember ever seeing him, who is this guy? Also will we be able to kill Keith?

The zombie in the green-and-orange flannel shirt is George, Gina’s brother-in-law. If Gina kills George in chapter 2 of Safe Haven, she does so by shooting out his stomach with a shotgun. Later, a zombie comes and infects George, thus resurrecting him. The MC does have the option to destroy George’s brain earlier in chapter 2 which would prevent him from rising.

As for Keith, his plot armor falls off in Part 3.

Any plans to continue on past the next expansion into the survival/apocalypse zombie story theme in ZESH or are you handing off everything via Dead Zone?

I continue to be interested in post-apocalyptic and Dystopian themes, as well as zombie apocalypses. As far as I can see, I will add to the Zombie Exodus Universe, exploring other areas of the globe and other timelines. With the success of the series, I see no evidence of fans growing tired of these games.

I already have an outline for a future spin-off series, though Safe Haven Part 3, Dead Zone, and my zombie boarding school game with Mia are my planned projects for the next few years.