Games by JimD Newsletter – Game Updates, NPC Portraits, Stronghold (Patreon)

Welcome to my 77th newsletter! It's been a reasonably quiet February, but I've been making progress on my titles. We've had two snowstorms here in New Jersey, but the snow quickly melted both times. It was still amazing to look out my window and see the snow-covered grass as it was falling. It's a peaceful scene when you are writing.

As always, in this newsletter, I will update you on my games that are currently in development. Safe Haven is my priority, but I have also been moving along Stronghold at a steady pace. I will discuss my timeline for both games below.

Deadbury Academy is also in development, but I've been working on it more slowly. Three zombie survival games in development seem like a lot, but they all have their own twist on the story.

Let's get started.

Zombie Exodus: Safe Haven, Part 4

Part 4 stands at 500,000 words, with over 20,000 words added this month! I'm targeting an additional 3,000-4,000 words by month's end.

I'm still working on the college campus mission, which will be converted into a full-length chapter for the game. It has a lot of impact on things that happen later in the story, so it deserves to have its own dedicated chapter.

I will also push through an update soon that adds fixes for typos and grammatical errors that players have found. I'm also testing out some issues that people are finding with checkpoints loading correctly in the game. If any of you have had such problems, please let me know.

The most significant update to the game will be the addition of new character portraits. I have 12 portraits that have been commissioned over the past year, and they are ready to go in the game. They will add great value to the app. I will add a question at the start of the game asking if you would like to see in-game portraits or not. In this way, those who wish to play the game entirely text-based will not see the portraits. Please keep in mind that the portraits are just an interpretation of what characters look like. You are free to imagine them in any way you like.

Next month, I'd like to finish the college campus mission and continue with the rest of the main plot. I will also work on a scene that provides opportunities between chapters for things like training, allocating resources for new additions, spending time with other characters, etc., instead of taking up time in each chapter. These tasks and opportunities will be done as downtime activities between chapters. I will also provide a report on the status of the junkyard and the group.

Zombie Exodus: Stronghold

Since I decided to convert the game to publish through Hosted Games, I've diligently worked on Stronghold. I have now converted over 18,000 words since the beginning of this month. I'm adding new content than what you may have read on StoryLoom. I've also added quite a few statistics and skills for this game since StoryLoom needed better mechanics to handle such things. I'm using a system similar to the one used for Safe Haven but am keeping it more straightforward. Here are the skills for Stronghold:

• Athletics
• Close Combat
• Empathy
• Intimidation
• Leadership
• Medicine
• Persuasion
• Ranged Weapons
• Scavenging
• Science
• Search
• Stamina
• Stealth
• Technology
• Will

Deadbury Academy

While I have worked on Deadbury Academy this month, it was my focus. As I mentioned above, I need to go back and rework some of the earlier scenes when you are sitting in class, and the plane crash in the woods occurs. I haven't had as much time to devote to this game, but I would like to have the first part released next year.

That's all for this month.