February Newsflash #2

In the wake of the Royal Affairs epilogue coming out I did a few bits and bobs of bugfixing, but overall it's been very smooth sailing!

Honor Bound has its lovely Steam page and beautiful cover art by Adrien Valdes which I frankly cannot and will not stop talking about.

I'm listening to Grand Ceremony from the Pyre soundtrack right now, which is on my Honor Bound playlist. It always gets me in the mood for writing something bombastic!

...although "bombastic" is not necessarily the word for what I've been doing this fortnight. I finished drafting Chapter 8 and submitted it to my editor, which I was so pleased about, and it was also lovely to playtest Chapters 7 and 8 and realise "oh these are actually hanging together pretty well!" During a lot of the fortnight, though, I've been combing over the game to find incompatible romance routes and writing and coding conversations with characters where they'd rather you weren't dating certain other people.

It took a LONG time to cover all my bases and make sure I wasn't writing in continuity errors. I don't mind PC's cheating on the person they're dating, but if the NPC knows something's going on and it matters to them, they need to mention it or it feels weird!

But once I had all that done, it was surprisingly quick to code Chapter 9 - which is what I've finished up this last hour. Next week it'll be time to write it! The PC gets a holiday with some of their colleagues and can rest, chill out, and do a lot of romancing if that's their interest.

Honor Bound current wordcount: 338596 words

Honor Bound fortnight wordcount: 17648 words

Honor Bound average playthrough: 76869 words

Behind the Scenes:

I went to see the Strictly Come Dancing live tour! This show is called Dancing with the Stars in other countries. I was never into it at all until last year, and now my whole family are fans!

My favourite bit:

So much of this fortnight was planning and coding, so I'm tempted to say "the moment RandomTest passed 25K seeds" but I think what I'm proud of is planning out the activities the PC can do with people during their trip in Chapter 9. I would love to be there in real life, it sounds gorgeous!

Sneak peek:

(apologies for the lack of indents but hopefully it'll still be readable! It's one of many, many jealousy/incompatibility conversations that I wrote this week which was also how I spent Valentine's Day, heh)

Savarel looks determined to be relaxed, while ${varenn} is making no such effort; ${var_their} broad shoulders are even stiffer than usual.

"It's simply best that everyone is behaving in ways that befit—" ${varenn}'s saying, and Savarel's relaxed pose goes out of the window as ${sav_they} @{sav_pl sit|sits} up very straight.

"I think you're just jealous," ${sav_they} ${sav_say}, and you're concerned that your

*if hb_age = 1

[i]far[/i] younger

*elseif hb_age = 2

subordinate

colleague is—"

$!{sav_they} @{sav_pl break|breaks} off as you approach, and @{sav_pl smooth|smooths} ${sav_their} sage-green linen robe.

"Savarel clearly has concerns about the nature of our relationship," ${varenn} says, barely opening ${var_their} mouth. "Please could you clarify the situation."

Happy weekend, everyone!