This is a part of the Aeran x MC romance branch that continues where Episode 2 leaves off. I've chosen to include specific flavour text conditional statements, so if you see text that doesn't reference your particular MC's set up, don't worry, it will be there!
Spoilers ahead.
“$nickname…”
“I mean it. No one knows what will happen to them in the future. Expecting the ...
2022-06-15 16:56:50 +0000 UTC View PostHi friends,
Happy June! The month is flying by and I am running out of time to finish all the things I planned before my hiatus. Because development is shaping up in a different way than I had originally planned, I have made some adjustments to my original 2022 roadmap.
Episode 3 is moving along steadily, but it will not be finished by the end of the month. Though I have been trying to make up for the month and a half I lost to writer’s block earlier this year, it is now time th...
2022-06-14 14:31:00 +0000 UTC View PostSpoilers ahead! A little bit of a conversation between Zenaida and Veyer. (Hopefully by next week I'll be out of their scene and we can catch up with one of the other paths. ;) )
Zenaida’s nostrils flare.
Sensing an oncoming quarrel, you turn your back on them and cross the courtyard to assist Malsara with the boat. The assassin barely acknowledges you when you arrive and reluctantly p...
2022-06-08 16:55:59 +0000 UTC View PostHi folks,
As I've been patching Episode 2, it's becoming clearer that maintaining the Story Log's specifics is extremely time consuming and tedious. While I really want the player to be able to reflect on the major/important events and choices of their playthrough, coding the Story Log and making sure it is free of mistakes is an absolute nightmare. This doesn't have to do with continuity tracking, but rather making sure multiple conditional statements are written in the right ord...
2022-06-08 02:30:31 +0000 UTC View PostSneak peaks are back! If you haven't finished your Episode 2 playthrough yet, I would steer clear of these as they will include spoilers (for obvious reasons).
This sneak peak is from Scene 1's Veyer branch. For context, this uses flavour text from a high Aeran friendship run (though the romance version uses something very similar).
“Fuck,” you breathe.
You were trying so hard ...
2022-06-01 17:53:34 +0000 UTC View Post
This is a first draft of Wayfarer’s global map. I always struggle with full world maps because it’s hard not to compare continent placement to the real world. There is also a lot of information that needs to go on a full map and it can start to look very crowded, very quickly. I decided to focus only on the continent names and the names of major seas, forests, mountains, and other landmarks. I also wanted to avoid country and capital names simply because most of the countries outside Rhes...
2022-05-26 16:51:37 +0000 UTC View PostHi friends,
Just a quick update to close out the end of the month! May has been filled with bug reports, patches, and community outreach. While I haven’t been writing as much as I typically do this month, I have more than enough to work on to keep on my toes.
I am currently taking a break from patches. The last alpha build patch was released on May 17. I’m waiting to accumulate a few more bug reports before I release the next one, so you will unfortunatel...
2022-05-25 17:22:34 +0000 UTC View PostHi friends,
What a week! The Episode 2 alpha update is FINALLY out. I’ve spent the past few days doing patches and fixing bugs and errors as they crop up. It will likely be some time before the episode’s build is declared stable, so keep an eye on the patch notes or the Patreon Discord in case you need to restart from the beginning. I am also still fiddling with approval triggers, so you may notice some changes in flavour text between playthroughs.
The public build patch was u...
2022-05-17 18:44:56 +0000 UTC View PostHi friends,
The next alpha build update is here and Episode 2 is now complete! This is another massive update and sees you through to the conclusion of the episode. This is also a UI update that adds a new game menu system for the Journal, Inventory, Codex, Map, and Tutorial screens.
Because of variable changes in Episode 2, you MUST start Episode 2 over from the beginning or you will run into continuity errors and some issues with companion/faction profiles. I...
2022-05-12 18:47:19 +0000 UTC View PostHi friends,
Happy May! The first week of the month has been hectic as I work towards getting the alpha update out. Since the last progress report, I’ve finished a UI update (you can see screenshots in the sneak peaks!) and coding all of the new material. The build is currently being playtested and I am aiming to release it on Thursday or Friday this week.
The UI update changes how the game menus look and function. It ...
2022-05-09 18:36:51 +0000 UTC View Post
As part of the next update, I've been working on a few UI changes. This is primarily to resolve a background issue with the game menus and the way the game stores game history. Previously, if you clicked through the game menus and codex without returning to the game, you would eventually hit a point where you would exceed the max history state and the return button would remove itself and you'd get permanently stuck in the menu. The game menus are now modal windows that slide over the main ga...
2022-05-04 16:41:37 +0000 UTC View PostHi friends,
As you may have noticed last week, I missed posting a progress report last week. I didn’t intend to skip a week, but because Scene 5 was progressing so well, I decided at the last minute to keep my focus where it was so I could do a more complete update later.
So, without further ado: Some News.
Scene 5 is finished! Wooooo! 🥳
And as things came together a lot faster than I expected, I’m actually a few days ahead ...
2022-04-25 16:00:08 +0000 UTC View PostDigging around in the document to find sneak peak material this late in the episode is like playing Minesweeper with spoilers. Anyway, here's more Melchior stuff from the draft (and a slightly intoxicated MC).
You hold out the bottle, thrusting it towards him. “Drink?”
His eyes—those absurdly attractive eyes—flicker over you. Then he shrugs and takes the bottle from your ha...
2022-04-20 19:11:59 +0000 UTC View PostA new SugarCube tutorial is here! As per the bonus content vote this month, this one is about the fundamentals of SugarCube and all the basic building blocks of a Twine game. Because there was more to cover here than I anticipated, this tutorial only deals the mechanical side of SC. It does not go into design elements or using HTML/CSS in your game.
Scene 5 is moving along! The text in this preview assumes that the player punched Quirinus after the gala and also selects option #3 at the end.
“There was a wager, you know,” he says after a moment, keeping his back to you.
You pause. “About what?”
“Whether you would return or not. After that delightful display with the Grand Archsage, some were certain you had lef...
2022-04-13 15:21:06 +0000 UTC View PostThere's a very important scene with Aeran here with a very important conversation about the Spire... But there's also going to be a lot of pain. 😂 I removed contextual flags, so the text reflects a world state where the MC has triggered Aeran's romance flags, has high approval, and Varyn is their mentor.
A furious look crosses his face. “Get out of the way, $firstname,” he grunts....
2022-04-06 16:45:02 +0000 UTC View PostHi friends,
Happy April!
The last two weeks have been frighteningly busy and challenging, to say the least. Aside from some personal stuff (family members in the hospital, my partner’s family contracting Covid—everyone’s fine, but it was a little stressful for a time), I’ve been crunching pretty hard to get Episode 2 finished. Last progress report I mentioned doing a reassessment of how far away I am from an update and with the new batch of material I’ve finished, I thin...
2022-04-03 20:19:51 +0000 UTC View Post“They may not be able to interfere with you while you are inside, but the moment you leave, they will apprehend you. I would like to avoid that at all costs. It would not do for you to retrieve the Astrial from its chamber only for it to fall into unwanted hands upon your exit.”
Veyer clicks their tongue. “I’m assuming you have a solution, then?”
“Of course,” she says, smiling faintly. “And it involves you and Ashani. Considering you voted for my proposal, you shou...
2022-03-31 03:11:02 +0000 UTC View PostThis is part of a larger project I am working on this year. The goal is to eventually release a PDF guide to creating IF gamebooks in Twine (SugarCube only) and an annotated template that provides sample code and examples of popular IF elements.
I've included a Twine HTML file available on this post that has some examples of the character creator elements I discuss here. Because the Patreon text editor doesn’t allow code blocks, I highly r... 2022-03-25 00:07:28 +0000 UTC View Post
There's a lot going on in this scene and a lot of dialogue variations (both positive and negative), but here's a taste of what happens when things go poorly. Because that's always fun. 😅
“The circumstances of your employment have changed significantly since you left Rona,” she says. “So much so, the original mission Zenaida envisioned for you no longer exists. It is the...
2022-03-23 18:29:26 +0000 UTC View PostHi friends,
I’m not quite sure where to start with this one. Episode 2 is continuing to kick me in the butt and March’s progress has been quite a struggle. At this point I’m writing anywhere between 1500 and 3500 words a day and the mental energy it takes to keep focused, fill in the gaps in the dialogue trees, and keep progressing is very draining. So, forgive me if this update this a little more… rambly? Rambling?... than usual.
I think, even though there are a lot of pa...
2022-03-22 03:13:02 +0000 UTC View PostThere's going to be a lot of lore in the next update. Here's a bit of it:
“The Astrial’s been sitting in Diradan Tower for hundreds of years. Why hasn’t the Guild tried to use it before? Why now?”
“There was no reason,” Umbria says. “The staff was dormant, its magic dead. It was little more than a relic of the past, an empty husk coveted for its historical importance.” 2022-03-16 17:44:28 +0000 UTC View Post
Another dialogue variation from the Lethalis scene, this time with a mention of a certain someone...
A small murmur ripples through the room as the Lethalis mages shift in their seats, their gaze passing from you to Oshiro with interest. The lanky elf smirks and tosses their ring a final time, catching it expertly and slipping it onto their index finger. Across the table, a faint smile crosses...
2022-03-09 21:37:51 +0000 UTC View PostHi friends,
Happy March! Just a quick progress report for this week. I’m still working through the last scenes of Episode 2 (which are coming along), and I’ve made a couple of small additions to my Patreon which I’ll go over in a moment.
Episode 2 Scene 4 is currently at 50k words. I’ve finished a major dialogue branch (which can drastically affect the outcome of the scene and the player’s options going into Episode 3). It’s good to have that done,...
2022-03-07 17:42:00 +0000 UTC View PostThe opening of Scene 4 can go differently if the player selects to take control of the meeting with Lethalis themselves or leave it to Aeran. The first two previews were from the player-controlled branch; this is from the Aeran version.
Conditional statements have been removed; this version is for low-approval Lethalis.
She smiles faintly. It’s impossible to tell whether she find...
2022-03-02 16:19:47 +0000 UTC View PostThis article is a continuation of January’s Romance in Gaming article. Last time, I spoke of romance as gameplay in a broad scope, and its impact on interactive fiction development. I want to now focus in on the mechanical gameplay of romance, how it is implemented, and what it says—intentionally or unintentionally—about diversity within LGBTQ+ games.
Though I am focusing on interactive ...
2022-02-27 08:54:39 +0000 UTC View PostHi friends,
Another snippet from an ongoing WIP dialogue branch. Conditional statements that control flavour text have been removed for the sake of clarity. In this preview, the player character trained with Varyn.
“I heard it in passing,” you say. “Do you know how much information you can glean simply by walking through a room at a party? A little drink, a little comfo...
2022-02-23 17:06:54 +0000 UTC View PostHi friends,
I should not be surprised at this point that February is a short month, but… ahh February is a short month. While I’m happy with what I have accomplished so far, there still is a lot of work to be done on the end of Episode 2. At this point, I think it’s safe to say that the rest of the Order of Lethalis scene is going to take me to the end of February and into March, and then March will be spent wrapping up the Episode with a few unique moments that hinge on ...
2022-02-21 17:01:03 +0000 UTC View PostHi friends,
Another February has rolled around! A year ago, I launched my Patreon and started the process of taking making this game from a hobby project to a full-time job. I’m so grateful for all of you and your support of this project; Wayfarer wouldn’t even be close to the kind of game it is without you. I am so blown away by how far it’s come since then. This time last year, I was just starting Episode 1 Route B and spent most of my time worrying about the Twine editor lag an...
2022-02-07 18:22:02 +0000 UTC View PostHi friends,
Episode 2 Scene 4 is in progress! Though my focus is all over the place, it is moving along nicely and I have about 5000 words drafted. This is a snippet of some of the new stuff I've been working on. If you want to avoid spoilers for the next update, skip this post!
“Your Rona solution was a ramshackle excuse of an idea and you know it!” the dwarf says, his booming...
2022-02-06 02:43:53 +0000 UTC View Post