Project W Post: May 2024 (Patreon)

Hello everyone! It's that time again when I share some insight into the game coming after OL: N&F. And I've got some information that might be interesting, but in a very different way than usual.

I'm not gonna tell you about what the project is like, I'm gonna tell you what it isn't. And Project W isn't about the story or characters I had been planning through 2022-2023. I scrapped years of outlining work!

I mentioned in April my struggles on choosing leads, but I actually had a set of main characters already created before. I even spent hours picking out names for them, and I do not name characters lightly. That's a major step to take. But sadly, none of them will come to exist. Unless maybe I can include side characters that are somewhat like them as easter eggs.

Now, the things mentioned in the earlier posts during 2024 aren't wrong. The genre and setting and time period and such didn't change from my original intentions. It's the premise and cast that's been restarted, and the magic of the world has gotten a lot more complicated than it was originally. If I hadn't brought this up, people probably never would've realized what a massive change happened behind the scenes.

The reason I did this was because the original story concept I had simply wasn't good enough. I chose it because it was the easiest way I could think of to handle a super customizable MC without their backstory/abilities getting too hard to handle in terms of writing alterations.

But I didn't want to make another game where the only interesting part was getting to know a cast of fun characters. That is still going to be an element of this game of course, however I wanted to be more aspirational and have an engaging plot. I kept trying and trying to make the story I had better, and it wasn't happening. Adding on more subplots and expanding the cast simply couldn't change that what I'd made up for the arcs was way too uninteresting. So eventually, I realized I had to give it up entirely. And then it took longer to accept that none of the characters I'd imagined could be reworked to fit a new story and would have to be left behind as well.

At this point it's freeing and a relief to have started anew, so no worries there. The concepts I'm working with now are leaps and bounds more creative than before. If I can use them to the fullest I think it'll be quite an experience. But there's a long, long way to go before it could be put into production. I hope by the time OL2 is done I'll have figured all this out.

But that's this month's insight into the development of Project W!

Previous Posts---- 

January 2024 (Basic Info)

February 2024 (Time Period, world, and MC details) 

March 2024 (Story and release structures)

April 2024 (A bit of leading character details)