Chrysanthemum Games

Weekly Update - 3 March, 2025

Hello again, everyone!

As most of you are aware, the public build of Chapter Three went out this week. In the meantime, I've been working away at Chapter Four, and have added another 9,000 words to it, bringing it to a current total of 17,000, which some of you no doubt saw in the BIP. This includes Charon's individual route scene for the chapter, as well as a scene everyone gets once that first part is over, where you have a brief talk with the Moirae about prayers and domains and thin...

BIP - February

Hey all!

I just released Chapter Three, so as you might expect there isn't a whole lot of new content for the BIP, but! If you like Charon I have good news for you—their Chapter Four plot scene is done, as is the one that immediately follows, which everyone gets. So far, that's 17,000 words, meaning I managed to write 9,000 more this week, so things are certainly humming along.

2025-02-28 02:00:04 +0000 UTC View Post

Weekly Update - 24 February, 2025

(The way I accidentally typed '2015' up there for a second. Oof.)

Anyway!

Hello, everyone. We've nearly hit the end of the early access cycle for Chapter Three. Everyone on here should be able to see it now, so if you can't, please let me know.

I ended up only doing a bit of basic outlining this week, but as a result, I also managed to get 8,000 words on the first of the scenes for Chapter Four. This chapter begins with a route-specific scene for each RO/PO, where we start...

Early Access - Demo #2

Hello, Blossoms!

It's a week before public release, which means it's your turn to get access to the demo. As I mentioned in the last weekly update, this chapter's pretty huge, but it probably doesn't feel that long, since the last scene splits eight ways based on your route. Still, I hope you enjoy it!

You can find it here. Remember to create an account and login if...

Weekly Update - 17 February, 2025

Hey everyone!

As some of you are aware, the early access cycle for the new version of the demo, with all of Chapter Three included, began yesterday. That means everyone else will be getting it over the next week and a bit, and the public update will drop just before the end of the month.

(Chapter Three adds 157,000 words to the game, in total.)

I'll be taking some time to get the next chapter set up before I start writing; outlining can be a tough process sometimes, but hope...

Blood of the Living - Demo #2

Hello, Full Blooms!

Here, hot off the presses, we have the second demo for Blood of the Living, this one newly including the full Chapter Three. As usual, you get it first, and then it makes its way down the other tiers before public release in 10 days' time.

I hope you enjoy it.

Bonus Content - Project Crystalline UI

Hey, everyone!

As I mentioned, this month's bonus content is a bit unique. Some of you already know that I'm slowly cooking up another project behind the scenes, one that I'll be releasing in Twine rather than ChoiceScript. I've been gradually building the UI, based on a template, with my own changes and additions for the anticipated needs of this story—currently just called "Project Crystalline."

Here is the fruit of my labours this far. Of course, it's not done yet, and there...

Weekly Update - 10 February, 2025

Hey everyone!

Good news to report so far—this week, with an extra 8,000 words, I finished off Pyri's scene, leaving me with just one to go, featuring Hades. I'm hopeful I'll have that one done by this time next week, but if it's not quite that fast, I think it will be close, so stay tuned for an announcement on when early access will be happening!

As I may have mentioned earlier, this month's bonus content may be a first look at the UI for Project Crystalline, rather than anythi...

Weekly Update - 3 February, 2025

Hey all!

This week, as I mentioned in the last update, was mostly editing and testing for the BIP release, but I did also get 4,000 words in on the Pyri scene, which I expect might be just a little under halfway through. The last scenes of Chapter Three do vary quite a bit in length, generally depending on how many branches there are, which is dependent on the pacing of the individual romances. For example, the PC can already be in a relationship with Hermes or Hekate, so those scenes l...

BIP - January

Hey everyone!

Here's the BIP for this month; the chapter is now sitting at 133,000 words or so (up 38k from last month!), and the final scenes have been completed for Hekate, Alekto, and Charon, so if you're on any of those routes, this is now the complete Chapter Three for you. Hades and Pyri will be the order of business for next month, so look forward to that, too. :)

Just as a reminder, Dashingdon is shutting down imminently, so this month's demo is hosted only on CoGdemos. Yo...

Weekly Update - 27 January, 2025

Hello everyone!

Another week, another 11,000 words. I finished the Charon scene, and I might get just a tiny bit of the Pyri one done this week, but that probably won't make it into the BIP. The rest of the time between now and the 31st is going to be devoted to editing and testing, so that hopefully the thing goes out in a readable form!

As most of you have likely heard by now, one of the hosting sites I've been using for the demo, Dashingdon, will be shutting down at the end of ...

Weekly Update - 20 January, 2025

Hi everyone!

I managed to squeeze in 11,000 words this week, which was just enough to finish off the Alekto scene. (It brought the chapter to 122,000 words.) This has given me a pretty realistic idea of how long it takes to do one of these, so my revised goal for the end of the month is to have the next one done (with a couple more days thrown in for editing and testing to make sure the BIP will run).

That one is I believe Charon's, which will leave me with Pyri and Hades to fini...

Weekly Update - 13 January, 2025

Hey everyone!

I made some quite solid progress this week, getting another 10,000 words down, for a total of 111k in Chapter Three. I've now finished the solo Hekate scene, and gotten a start on Alekto's as well. I'm hoping I'll be able to finish that one this week and get started on the next.

At my current pace, I probably won't quite finish the chapter by the end of the month (though I'm definitely going to try), but I should at least be very close, and set up to complete it in ...

Bonus Content - Pyri & Hermes

Hey everyone! The last of the 'ROs from another RO's POV' series is here, and we have Pyri from Hermes's. This one is set specifically in the part of FoA between the Chapter Five outing and the Chapter Eight fruit scene, and is best understood as being during Chapter Six. I had fun with these two; they're normally mostly being silly when they're spending time together onscreen, but they have their more serious moments as well.

Anyway, enough rambling. I hope you enjoy. :)

-------...

Weekly Update - 6 January, 2025

Hey everyone!

If you haven't gotten it from me already, happy new year!

I spent the partial week getting started on my way through the rest of the chapter 3 scenes. With 6,000 new words, it's now sitting at 101k in total. I'm a good chunk of the way through the solo Hekate scene now, but the romance variations at the end are going to be where a lot of the word count comes from. Fortunately, having already written her version of the poly scene, I have a fair bit of that already, s...

BIP - December

Hello everyone!

The initial plan for this month was to release the BIP with 30,000 new words. I'm pleased to say that I've exceeded that a bit with 37,000 instead, mostly so I could get to the end of the scene I was working on. This amounts to an addition of the poly scene (with variants for being originally on Hekate's or Hermes's route), and Hermes's non-poly RO scene. So if you're on a different route from one of those, there isn't anything new this month, unfortunately, but if you <...

Weekly Update - 30 December, 2024

Hey everyone!

We're almost at the end of the year!

As I thought, I spent most of last week relaxing and enjoying my holiday, but I have started doing a little bit of prep work for the final part of this chapter—outlining the scenes in more detail. Those outlines will not be on the BIP that goes out tomorrow, but the rest of my progress from this month definitely will be.

I'll talk a little bit more about what I'm aiming to achieve in January next week, but for now, the B...

Weekly Update - 23 December, 2024

Hello, everyone!

You may remember that I said I was aiming for 6k words last week, to round out the 30 I was aiming to have for the month. Well, I got there, and the non-poly scene with Hermes still wasn't quite finished. So... then I wrote 7k more just to bring that scene to a close.

I'm pleased to say, therefore, that I've written 13,000 words this week, and the total for the month is at 37,000! I think I'm going to give myself the last week and a little bit of the month off, s...

Weekly Update - 16 December, 2024

Hey everyone!

I got another 12,000 words done this week, bringing me to a total of 24k for the month. I'm hoping to wrap up that last 6k this week, so I can have the last week of the month off for the holiday. Right now, I'm done with the poly scene and starting the first of the solo RO scenes, namely Hermes's. I'm hoping that the last few thousand words will get me most of the way through that.

That's about it for news this week. Still slowly poking at plot and character design ...

Bonus Content - Alekto & Pyri

Hello, everyone!

This month's bonus content is the second to last in the current series, wherein one RO (the one whose route the PC is on) is seen from the perspective of another. In this case, we have Alekto, as seen by Pyri.

The series will conclude next month, with Pyri as seen by Hermes.

I hope you enjoy them both, but for now, the first.

--------

“You’ve been using brighter colors lately.” Pyri, leaning a little aside from their own easel, looks at ...

Weekly Update - 9 December, 2024

Hello, all!

This has been a very good week of progress for FoA, with a grand total of 14,000 new words. I'm quite pleased by the speed of this, as it gives me a little leeway to take some holidays off this month while still meeting my wordcount goal.

The end of the poly scene is taking a lot longer than anticipated, largely because there's some discussion in both the Hekate-route and Hermes-route versions about what kinds of physical intimacy the PC is comfortable with and intere...

Weekly Update - 2 December, 2024

Hello, all!

Welcome to December. That never becomes a less-strange sentence, because the end of the year always sneaks up on me. At this time last year, I was getting started on the edits for FoA's complete draft. Little did I know that I had five months' worth of work ahead of me!

I've certainly got more than that when it comes to completing BotL, but that's a little more expected. My goal for this month is to finish Chapter Three, or write 30,000 words, whichever comes first (t...

BIP - November

Hello, everyone!

Today is the last day of the month, and so the Build-in-Progress is here. This month, I managed to write 42,000 new words on Chapter Three, bringing its total word count to 58,000. Everyone should now have a version of the Iasion scene, with or without Demeter, unless of course you opted to not see him at all. The RO scenes are not written yet, except for those of you who have already indicated interest in the poly with Hermes and Hekate—that scene is fully outlined ...

Weekly Update - 25 November, 2024

Hello again, all!

It's been... quite the week.

As it turns out, the surgery I was scheduled to undergo would not have been a good idea, for various medical reasons I won't bore you with. The end result is that I spent... several hours in the hospital being prepared for a procedure, and then when I got to the actual surgical suite, it didn't happen. Considering this was for a procedure that would have helped a chronic condition I have, you can imagine, I think, that this was rather...

Weekly Update - 18 November, 2024

Hey everyone.

If you're reading this around the time it's released, I'm probably having surgery right now. I'm not sure, at the time of this writing, exactly how long my recovery period will be, but I do know I should hopefully still be on track for my goal this month of 40,000 new words in the chapter.

I've finished both variants of the Iasion scene, so now I'm working on the final block of seven RO scenes, starting with the poly one. I hope to have at least one or two of those ...

October BIP - Dashingdon version

Hey everyone.

It seems that a small but not negligible number of you are getting early restart errors with the cogdemos version of the BIP. I would advise everyone experiencing this to clear their cache and try again first, but in the event that doesn't help, I've now also got a Dashingdon version. I hope that will help those of you with this error, and in the future, unless I see evidence that the site admins have fixed the bug, I will upload both versions.

Dashingdon, of cours...

Bonus Content - Charon & Alekto

Hey everyone!

Continuing on with the "ROs from other ROs' points of view" theme, this month we have Charon from Alekto's. They're a strange pair in a lot of ways, but I think there's a way they relate that it's hard for anyone else to quite get. As the two Olympian exiles in the bunch, they do have a lot in common, after all.

I hope you enjoy it.

------------------

Charon runs the pad of their thumb lightly along the edge of the book cover. It’s rare they get the o...

Weekly Update - 11 November, 2024

Hey everyone!

I've been keeping up a pretty blistering writing pace this week, to the tune of about 12,000 words. It's tough to try managing 2k a day, but I know I'm capable of it, as for a while it was sort of the 'going pace' when I was writing FoA. I'm not sure how close it will get to being that again, but for now I'm aiming for a goal of 40,000 this month, around things like my surgery, which will certainly drop productivity a little bit.

Anyway, all this to say I'm about ha...

Weekly Update - 4 November, 2024

Hey everyone!

I hope you're all enjoying the start of November. I've got a pretty busy month upcoming, with a visit from my partner's mum followed by a (not major, no need to worry) surgery that will still likely involve a bit of painful recovery time. I'm also trying to make at least 40k words on BotL this month, so... here we are, haha.

I'm off to a good start, with 9,000 since the BIP on the 31st. I'm in the last part of the first version of the Iasion scene now, so I think I'...

BIP - October

Hello, everyone, and Happy Halloween to those of you who enjoy spookiness and candy!

The public demo just came out a little while ago, of course, so I haven't made it all that far into Chapter Three yet, but there are 16,000 words of new material, including the complete first (optional) scene with Demeter, and a partially complete (optional) scene with Iasion for those of you who are seeing him without Demeter's company. Right now, most of what's done on his scene is a variation on the ...