Alpha Preview Update (March) (Patreon)

Play the alpha here

Password: aprilcomesinlikealamb ⬅ ❗️

Report bugs here

View bug reports here

Incomplete routes guide ⬅ ❗️please check if you suspect your game ended early :)

What's New:

• 13,000 words of new content to Chapter 8
• The conclusion of the labyrinth mission and the first half of Chapter 8
• The beginning of the next mission with Lavinet, Halek, and Tallys
• Guard-kun is approaching and may appear as soon as the next update... and the first mention of Sibella de Vespe!

Developer's Notes

Hi everyone, I hope you're all doing well! 

Well, we've finally done it: we've wrapped up this mission and are moving briskly right into the next! Although I officially count the labyrinth mission and this next one as two parts of the same chapter, it felt like I needed some visual break or transition between the two to indicate the first one was truly over and to give us closure; so I threw the Chapter 9 header in there to see if it would feel right. Let me know what you think: should I make a "Chapter 8.5" header, or would that really look weird? Is a header even necessary at all?

I thought this adventure with Riel, Shery, Mimir, and Chandry would be a short, simple, light-hearted change of pace following the absolute behemoth that was Chapter 7, which was in the ballpark of 150,000 words alone. Imagine my surprise when I counted and found that this first half of Chapter 8 was 103,000 words, outstripping Chapter 6 as the second-biggest chapter in the game... HOW?! I wanted to scale back for this chapter and have a big reset, how did I still end up making this the second-longest chapter in the game ?????? 🥹🥹🥹

Other than that, there's not too much else to delve into! I was able to keep building the UI of the Twine version earlier in the month and have successfully ported over all the codex documents, newspaper articles, shop items, quest board, and more; we ran into a snag when I was halfway through building the interactive map, but once we get that taken care of (obscure code thing), the rest of the conversion for that should be quite easy! I also got some work done on my second novel manuscript, which I'm very happy about; I've been trapped in "early stage doldrums" for months/years where I'd poke at the thing half-heartedly, eke out a few thousand words, and then scrap it all in frustration immediately after. But I sat on it for a long time and told myself to be patient and just not force it, and now I think I've naturally felt my way out of the pit! So we'll see if I can keep all of those things balanced in terms of workload. 😂

[CONTENT WARNING: illness, hospitalization of a relative] For the sake of transparency, I will say that (although it was very fun celebrating my birthday at the beginning of this month), March was also one of the most stressful months I've experienced in a long time. A lot was going on, and I can't get into all the details, but one thing that I can talk about was that my grandmother (who lives in another country) was sent to the hospital 11 days ago. She's 97 and has been getting weaker over the last several years, so it wasn't exactly a surprise, but she is also my only surviving grandparent and the central keystone for our extended family: for basically my entire life, we've had a huge family reunion every summer at her house (except during the pandemic), and she is very treasured, so this was a distressing event that came at what felt like the worst time. I was sure I was going to have to drop everything to fly out to be with her and my family, but things are currently in limbo; we're still not sure if this is the end or if she's going to recover, so it's sort of an unresolved situation at the moment. I only say all this to explain that I'm going to carry on as if everything is normal for now; but if the worst occurs and I do have to drop everything, it'll almost certainly disrupt my update/work schedule, so I wanted to inform you guys ahead of time in case that ends up happening!

I also worried that this update might feel a little rushed in pacing because I was distracted by everything that was going on this month, but I'm not sure if that's my usual "post-writing-push first draft criticism" that always feels very nitpicky in the present, and then when I go back and read the content again later on, it's like, "Oh, this is actually not bad!" But if the resolution of the chapter does feel very brisk, I'll try to go back and fix it during my editing process down the line. 😁

Total wordcount: 944,920 words without code

What's Next

Continuing Chapter 8.5! Tallys and Lavinet trying to be professionals with each other while Halek is in between them like 🫥 is such a funny dynamic to me. 🤣 And do you think Chandry was robbed of a career change? I feel like the stories he gets to tell other people about rollicking around with the Shepherds in the past is more than enough award for him... 1000% there's going to be a new play about this in a year's time!

(Also, did you get out of the labyrinth successfully or no? 👀 I'm so curious how many people will get all of the rewards there are to earn!) 

Thank you, and I hope you enjoy!