Okay, first of all... July? July? Since when?!
I know the answer is 'since today' but... sometimes a new month really sneaks up on you. I'm not sure I'm prepared to be halfway through 2024, and yet here we are.
Anyway.
Happy July, everyone. As some of you already know, I released the very first BotL BIP here yesterday—a humble character and save creator plus five thousand words of the first chapter. As you can imagine, my goal for this month is just...
2024-07-01 02:00:03 +0000 UTC
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Hello, everyone!
Welcome to the very first BIP for Blood of the Living! This demo contains the character and save creator, as well as about 5,000 words of the first chapter. (Much of it is variation depending on which if any job the PC chose in the last game, so it may feel a little short, which I apologise for. But there's a little bit of summary and outline there for what's to come as well, so I hope you'll still enjoy it.
For Blood of the Living, I've switched my hosting to co...
2024-06-30 02:00:02 +0000 UTC
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Hey all!
It's Pyri's turn to feature in the variable bonus content this month, so please let me know what you'd like to see from their perspective!
2024-06-30 01:00:03 +0000 UTC
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Hey everyone!
It's been... a strange week. About halfway through it, I decided that what I had planned to be the "common plot" between all of the routes—PC and co. getting involved in the Trojan War and the events of the Iliad—really just... wasn't working. For several reasons, though the biggest two were pretty stark:
a: It wasn't serving any other part of the plot, so all of the other characters' emotional beats were totally separate from it, which didn'...
2024-06-24 02:00:03 +0000 UTC
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Hey everyone!
As you all voted for, this month's bonus content features Alekto with a hesitant, warm Dionysus. Have a handful of nonsense, with little daubs of both angst and fluff, because it's Alekto.
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For a while, the two of them simply walk through the grasses, enjoying the exercise and the changes to a familiar environment. Not unexpectedly, there are very few words exchanged, and the majority of those are not spoken aloud. Of course, Alekto...
2024-06-19 02:00:03 +0000 UTC
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Hey everyone!
I'm happy to report that I've finished the save building tool for Blood of the Living! It should do a reasonably good job of making sure all the very most important variables are set, so even though it won't replicate anyone's previous choices perfectly, I hope it does well enough for now.
I've also just gotten started on expanding the outline, so I'll give myself a few more days to do that this week and then I will get to code-skeleton-making and writing the actual...
2024-06-17 02:00:03 +0000 UTC
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Hey everyone!
We're back. If you haven't heard already. FoA officially has a Steam page now, where you can wishlist the game if you so desire. I'd certainly appreciate it if you did!
In the meantime, I've finally finished the slow task of organising all the variables into an excel sheet, and in the process I noticed a few redundancies and errors that I'll be able to fix once the editors have returned the game with their copyedits and content notes. So, even for that alone, this wa...
2024-06-10 02:00:03 +0000 UTC
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Hey everyone!
Welcome back to the spoilerific bonus contents about the plotlines of the character arcs for Blood of the Living. As always, major spoilers to follow, so stop reading here if you don’t want to have to deal with those just yet.
This month, I’m saying a little bit about Alekto and Hades.
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Alekto’s subplot could best be summarized in the sentence: “The past always comes back.” It’s about dealing with some of her not fully resolve...
2024-06-05 02:00:03 +0000 UTC
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Hey everyone!
It's a new month, and I'm back to work, this time on Blood of the Living! So far so good with the submission of FoA; we're working out a few hitches with the cover art and the tiny sizes a steam listing requires, but the game is currently being both copyedited and edited for content as I write this, so that's exciting!
As of now, the time frame estimates are:
Hey everyone!
Help me decide what kind of Alekto POV post is next. Specifically, help me decide what kind of PC features in it!
2024-05-31 02:00:02 +0000 UTC
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Hey everyone!
As you may be aware, I'm currently in the middle of a week or so off writing before I make the plunge into doing work for FoA's sequel, Blood of the Living. At the end of this week and into the beginning of next, I anticipate starting up on that, with some work on mundane things like a spreadsheet of variables I can refer to and hopefully setting up a save-emulation system so that (until I'm far enough along that a save import feature will be added by HG), at least the mos...
2024-05-27 02:00:02 +0000 UTC
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Hey everyone!
The votes said you wanted Charon's little bit from the end of Chapter 10, so here it is, in all of its emotionally-difficult glory.
Charon and Hades are in some ways the most similar of the ROs, but it's really fun to write these scenes where they're grappling with their emotions, and realize how different they really can be.
Anyway, I hope you enjoy it.
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Charon is silent for the trek, occupied by a swirl of thoughts more diffi...
2024-05-22 02:00:02 +0000 UTC
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Hey everyone!
We're back with the weekly update.
It turns out I did do a fair amount of FoA-related work last week, mostly bugfixes and continuity corrections that various people let me know about, which was very helpful and will definitely make the game more release-ready. There were also a surprising amount of 'publication assets' I needed to come up with, stuff like summaries of different lengths and so on for advertising purposes. I cannot recommend that part of the experienc...
2024-05-20 02:00:03 +0000 UTC
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Hey Blossoms and Buds.
It's time. The full second draft is here. Remember you'll have access to it for seven days before it comes back down so I can submit it to Hosted Games. Please enjoy, and if you happen to spot any continuity errors (that is, places where things happen that shouldn't according to what's already happened, like Alekto apologizing when she's already done so or the game acting like you know someone you've never met on your playthrough or things like that), please, plea...
2024-05-14 02:00:02 +0000 UTC
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Hey everyone!
As some of you may know, the early access period for the full second draft has begun! Everblooms got access on Saturday, and those of you in the Bud and Blossom tiers will have it as of this time tomorrow. Seedlings will get access on the 18th, and I'll be taking the project down on the 21st (all times AEST).
I know there are still a lot of things that could be better about the game, and it's an odd feeling to release it even knowing that. But of course, I don't thi...
2024-05-13 02:00:03 +0000 UTC
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Hey Everblooms!
Probably the least-interesting benefit of your membership is the opportunity to be featured in FoA's credits. I really would like to thank you all in that way for your support, but I recognize this is not something everyone is comfortable with, and furthermore not everyone might be on Patreon with the same name they'd prefer to have credited, so... it sorta has to be opt-in rather than opt-out.
That said, if you don't mind being featured there, would ...
2024-05-11 12:50:00 +0000 UTC
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Hey Everblooms.
It's time. The full second draft is here. Remember you'll have access to it for ten days before it comes back down so I can submit it to Hosted Games. Please enjoy, and if you happen to spot any continuity errors (that is, places where things happen that shouldn't according to what's already happened, like Alekto apologizing when she's already done so or the game acting like you know someone you've never met on your playthrough or things like that), please, please let me...
2024-05-11 02:00:03 +0000 UTC
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Hey again everyone!
I'm once again here with some insight into the individual character storylines for the sequel. This month, I have Charon's and Hekate's for your consideration.
As before, major spoilers for Blood of the Living lay ahead!
==============
As before, I've attempted to condense the plot of each route into a one-sentence summary. For Charon, that sentence is "Atonement is hard."
The big backstory reveal that sets all of the rest of...
2024-05-08 02:00:01 +0000 UTC
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Hey everyone!
We're still moving along towards the end. This week, I outlined and wrote the Chapter Ten scenes for Alekto, Pyri, and Charon, meaning I only have Hades and Hermes to go before I'm ready to move into editing the epilogue! After that it'll be a round of testing, and then the Early Access cycle begins.
I anticipate I'll achieve most of that this week, but I'm not certain yet how extensive my edits to the epilogue will be, so I can't yet pin down release dates. I appr...
2024-05-06 02:00:02 +0000 UTC
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Hey everyone! Welcome to what I'm pretty sure is the LAST end of the month BIP for Fields of Asphodel! Of course, the complete second draft will be available sometime next month, but it shouldn't take all 31 days to get there, so there's that.
Anyway, as usual there are two ways to access this: Dashingdon, which has save files but may throw unexpected errors that I can't fix on my side, and itch, which seems to run without those errors but lacks some accessibility features and also sav...
2024-04-30 02:00:03 +0000 UTC
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Hey all. The BIP drops in an hour. In the meantime (or more realistically, just whenever you come across this), please feel free to help me out with this poll!
Next month's character POV bonus content features Charon. Which recent scene of theirs would you like to see their perspective on?
2024-04-30 01:00:03 +0000 UTC
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Hey everyone!
This week was another fairly decent one for progress, I think. I managed to get my general changes done for Chapter Ten as well as add Hekate's post-Olympus scene. I do still have five of those to go plus adjustments to the epilogue, but the game is looking closer and closer to done!
There will be a couple irregularities in schedule this upcoming month (May). Firstly, this week in particular, you'll have the BIP as normal on the 30th, but the bonus content that I was...
2024-04-29 02:00:02 +0000 UTC
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Hey everyone!
It's been a pretty big week for progress here. I finished what needed doing on Chapter Eight, moved into Chapter Nine and did all the edits I wanted there, and I'm now working on the substantial edits of Chapter Ten. Right now, that's mostly in the scenes where you say goodbye to the NPCs if you chose Olympus; I've decided that the tone of those was off in a few instances and I also wanted to give the PC an option to choose a reason for having selected Olympus, rather than...
2024-04-22 02:00:02 +0000 UTC
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Hey all!
You voted to see Hades's perspective on the baking scene from Chapter Four, so that's below. Featuring a humorous, bold sort of Dionysus who knows absolutely nothing about baking. :)
I hope you all enjoy it.
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"How much cooking and baking have you done before, may I ask? It might be helpful for tailoring my explanation of the recipe, is all." Hades looks slightly downward at Dionysus, sort of able to guess the answer from the way the young...
2024-04-17 02:00:03 +0000 UTC
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Hey all!
This week, as I was moving through Chapter Eight, I decided that I really only needed to add one scene—a small bit with Makaria and Empusa—to the chapter, because I could also reuse the Kerby scene I'd snipped from an earlier chapter to pace out the section that goes a bit too fast.
So the good news is, Chapter Eight is nearly done! I've written that Makaria and Empusa scene, which contains a bit more opportunity to process some of the Eurydice and Orpheus stuff, and...
2024-04-15 02:00:02 +0000 UTC
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Hey everyone!
I hope you're all doing well. My life this week has been a series of minor incidents that have added up to a headache, but the good news is progress on FoA continues apace. I have made minor edits and adjustments to all of Chapter Seven, as well as changing a few descriptions of the PC's magic to be more on theme.
That means this week I'll be moving on to Chapter Eight, and all the new stuff I need to add there! Hopefully this won't take me more than a couple weeks,...
2024-04-08 02:00:02 +0000 UTC
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Hey everyone!
This month’s editing-related bonus content involves a few of the individual character routes for the upcoming sequel. As you’ll probably notice as we go, these are all still very rough ideas; all I’ve needed so far is a general storyline, and a way of splitting it into roughly five parts. I’ve tried to involve existing myths in as many of them as possible but a few of them are more my own creations than anything you’d find in the Greek mythological ‘canon,’ s...
2024-04-03 02:00:02 +0000 UTC
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Hey everyone!
No pranks, Chapter Six is fully edited! For those of you who get the BIP, you've probably already noticed, but I'm really happy I managed to pass that milestone by the end of the month. Of course, there's still plenty to go, but hopefully I can keep up the pace with it all.
Last week, I managed to write three new pair scenes to close out the chapter. This week, I hope to get through most of Chapter Seven. In addition to the usual "technical" edits (replacing variabl...
2024-04-01 02:00:04 +0000 UTC
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Hey everyone!
After what felt like a very long month of very hard work, I'm pleased to announce that the new BIP is here, and it includes the entirety of both Chapter Five and Chapter Six! There's a fair bit of new stuff to peruse, so if you're the sort that likes to see all that as it happens, I hope there's plenty here for you to enjoy, alongside the recent new scenes from the end of Chapter Four.
As before, I've done two different versions; I'm still working on making the itch...
2024-03-31 02:00:02 +0000 UTC
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Hey everyone!
Hades is up in the POV piece this month. I've been doing perspectives on some of the new scenes for these so far, and I've got a few more to work with now, so I'll let you tell me which one I should use. :)
2024-03-31 01:00:03 +0000 UTC
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