Alpha Preview Update (October) (Patreon)

Play the alpha here

Password: spookyseason ⬅ ❗️

Report bugs here

View bug reports here

Incomplete routes guide 

What's New

• 12,000 words of new content
• Continuation of Chapter 8
• Wacky magic shenanigans! MC being bewildered, for possibly the first time in their lives! Timey-wimey stuff continues!!
• Mimir's first day off interlude
• Minor stat changes from Chapter 3-Chapter 8

Developer's Notes

Hi everyone, the October update for the alpha build is here! 

Thank you so much for your support and kind words on my update a few weeks ago. My health has improved this month, so I managed to get a solid chunk of Chapter 8 done! The writing process flowed much better this time around and was less stymied by writer's block, though I'm still trying to find the fine balance between working as hard as possible and avoiding burnout... I think Chapter 7 did a number on me, both with how massive it was (almost 200,000 words in that chapter alone) and how much I was driving myself to push out content for it each month and get the whole thing over with--but I have to remind myself that 12,000 is still a lot! Long story short, I'm trying to exercise self-care and patience instead of falling into the old trap of 'well I could push myself even harder, but at what cost?...' which always leaves my brain feeling like scrambled eggs. Slow and steady wins the race!

I'm still trying to get used to writing Shery, Riel, Chandry, and Mimir, who are kind of like The Perfect Storm of non-combatants I never expected to write a mission for! One interesting thing is that, in past chapters, the mission teams were often divided quite evenly between "the quiet ones" and "the talkative ones." Tallys and Ayla tend to keep their thoughts to themselves more, so the social situation is eased by the presence of Briony and Lavinet, who sort of fire off everything they're thinking and are casual enough to kind of break the usual formalities and stiffness between people who don't know each other all that well. In other words, there's always some chatterbox to keep things light and brisk, like Chase trying to lift everyone's spirits by talking about dumb stuff while trekking through the swamp, etc.--there's always someone to break the tension and get the whole group talking and flowing together as a more cohesive unit. 

With the present team, pretty much everyone is quiet except Chandry, who's both ridiculous and an outsider, so I'm still feeling things out and trying to find ways to ensure that the quiet ones don't get eclipsed. We're still setting things up, so they're definitely going to have more to say as the trials go on, and an actual breather will help them get their bearings, too--but it's also more about fostering friendship and flow between them all than it is about straight up talkativeness. My guess is that I'm going to need to introduce an icebreaker to sort of bond everyone together and break the uneasiness and uncertainty they're feeling about this situation...

In other words, I'm probably going to get them super drunk.

(Could this be the first canonical appearance of Dark Shery?!)

In other news, I also fixed Mimir's first day off interlude (it wasn't meant to be accessible last month because it wasn't finished, but is now fixed so that it doesn't trap you in a loop on the stats page). Mimir was never intended to have a true day off arc like the other characters, so her scenes are more functional and intentionally shorter than others--it was the only way I could justify not cutting her as a character while still keeping the work for myself manageable!

And as a last thing, I arrived at the abrupt conclusion that I absolutely hate fairmath and don't really want to use it as much anymore. It was just becoming really annoying, not knowing if small stat changes (like 3%) were actually adding anything, but I felt beholden to continuing to use them because 1) fairmath is the easiest way to ensure that you don't exceed 100% in your stats and 2) mixing and matching regular numbers and fairmath led to wild glitches in the past, so I was afraid to switch back and forth for the really small numbers. But this chapter, I finally got fed up with it, especially because in Twine, you don't need to use fairmath in order to not exceed 100%. So I went back and changed everything from Chapter 3 and onwards, so that all 2% and 3% stat changes are now just a straight +1 or -1. 

What does this mean? Well, as far as I know, there are three possibilities:

1) Going through the alpha build from a fresh start, you might notice a MASSIVE boost to your stats, and you might achieve higher numbers than you ever did before.

2) There is no significant or noticeable change whatsoever, because those 2% and 3% changes were registering as an increment of 1, after all. 

3) Either one of the above, with an added small possibility that some numbers might exceed 100% in your stats. This is highly doubtful, but if it does happen, just ignore it. It shouldn't break anything in your game and may look a bit ugly in the stat bar, but it will be a moot point by the time the game is converted to Twine (we are on Chapter 3 of the conversion process, have four songs of the soundtrack drafted, and are building a new UI from scratch, btw)! And hey, you can enjoy being so overpowered that you literally break past the stat bar!

I think that's all for now: I hope you enjoy the update, and be sure to check the incomplete routes guide linked above if you have questions about how to achieve certain paths!

Total wordcount (without code): 871,992 words without code

What's Next

The first trial... Dark Shery... Prince Cosmas... a lot awaits us in Archmage Tangriel's city!