September Newsflash #1

This should be the last of the "I have been very busy with family things and have not been working much" newsflashes for a while. Although being on holiday was truly lovely, all-day childcare for six weeks is a lot and I'm eager to get back to full-time writing.

Here is a song from the Honor Bound playlist to enjoy!

I've finished the Matia character study, and have been making slow inroads into a couple of other things (one of them is a very early-stages secret IF collaboration with my wife and another is a non-CoG thing) as well as doing a more detailed outline for the Royal Affairs extra epilogue. I also sent off lots of ideas for marketing descriptions to CoG as well as a... five-page document about cover art ideas and references. I may have gone a bit overboard.

On impulse I have started an IF advice blog on Tumblr, IF Seal. I love advice columns and enjoyed if-confessions and Story Hospital when they were open, and I often get asks about writing and narrative design sooo here it is. If you don't have a Tumblr and want to submit something to it, drop me a message or a comment here and I can answer it both here and over there.

And... drumroll... I have finished coding Honor Bound Chapter 5!

Current wordcount: 187051

Fortnight's wordcount: 5677

Average playthrough wordcount: 49109

Behind the scenes:

I finally got Baldur's Gate 3! I am working my way through it very very slowly! I'm enjoying it a lot! I have lots of exclamation marks about it!

In other news I really enjoyed Turncoat Chronicle by Hazel Gold from Hosted Games. It's about palace intrigue and usurping your father the king. I enjoyed that it had such an emphasis on social manoeuvring and marriage plots over literal backstabbing, and the setting is beautiful. I'd love to see more from the author and the setting.

The Dragon and the Djinn by Athar Fikry from Choice of Games was really amazing too - an Arabian Nights story that's fresh, queer, and fun! I had a great time romping around freeing djinn and causing chaos. salvage. by Athar Fikry is a short, heartbreaking game about grief which I loved too.

Sneak peek:

The peeks at Chapter 5 are just placeholder text at the moment, so here is a little bit from Chapter 4:

You step into a vast, parquet-floored ballroom with a wide skylight of stained glass in its ceiling; sunlight streams through, filtering gentle rainbows onto the scene. Musicians play in the gallery above, while a vast spread of food, plates, and punch bowls has been laid out.

Taking a moment to acclimate to the warmth, as well as the noise of music and chatter, you gather yourself. Doors leading out to the gardens have been flung open, and a group of Elites are lounging and smoking on the immaculate lawn while others seem to be performing an archery contest. @{see_lav You recognize the woman holding forth: you saw her in the carriage on the way here.|There's a woman holding forth intensely, though you're not sure if her companions are interested.} From an inner door emerges loud laughter and the clatter of dice: some impromptu games have started. In here, a group of officers are bearing down on a group of foreigners—Westerlind, you think.

My favourite bit:

I am really pleased with how I'm embedding conversations about asexuality and aromanticism into conversations with the ROs. Credit where it's due, a ton of this is thanks to conversations I've had with my wife (she is doing it really well with her current unannounced project) about it. It isn't something I've felt totally happy with in my previous games so I wanted to go into more depth. So I have characters chatting about where they sit regarding emotional and physical connections, and the MC can express how they feel about it all too in more detail - basically it has a lot more breathing room and nuance. It'll go through plenty of iteration, but it feels like it's on a more solid foundation.