Quest Failed: Chapter Two - Dev Log #111 (Patreon)

Hello, hello, hello!

I hope everyone is doing well! I'm back again with a new dev log! The days seem to be getting chillier as we step into 2020 and I've been having to crank up the heating as a result, but gosh do I hope for more mild weather eventually! Feels like it's been an eternity since it was warm outside! Brrrrrrrr~

But rambling about the weather like an old person aside (I'm not THAT old just yet) I suppose it's about time I update you all on the progress of things and offer some musings into the development of Chapter Two thus far!

The main thing I've been focusing on is the writing so far--and it's been going at a steady pace. I have my good days where the words seem to flow effortlessly and the scenes practically write themselves, and then the bad days where sometimes getting a scene done is like hammering my head against a break wall until the words bleed out--but overall I try to ensure that at least something is done day to day, so the script steadily increases in size. And gosh is it a big script so far! I've said it before I'm sure, but this is truly one of the lengthiest things I've ever written, and I still have to keep fleshing it out! The word count for Chapter Two is currently larger than a good number of my past projects I've completed in the past put together, and it really does blow my mind just how far we've come from the Chapter's earliest concept in a word document file.

I'm not typically one to boast, but gosh am I proud of everything I've written so far! Thank you to everyone for giving me the chance to create something this crazy big and I really do hope you'll enjoy it and that it lives up to your expectations!

A large amount of said word-count is distributed pretty evenly between a number of the side quests and h-scenes so far, I'd say--though I'm hoping that the main story will offer enough meat on its bones, too and be just as fun a read! Writing such a non-linear story has come with its set of challenges, and sometimes it can be a real headscratcher for me to script out when I'm trying to link everything together, and chunks of text are all out of order within the script. It makes me miss the days of how linear Chapter One was, just for how easy that one was to link everything together, haha.

Though this does bring me to the central focus of the dev log, where I want to talk about how Chapter Two is structured--and some of my hopes/fears for what people might think when experiencing it.

I'm sure I've mentioned it once, or twice, or every other dev log I've written (or maybe not at all!)--but I think the best way to view Chapter Two is that it's a larger collection of small stories that can be experienced in a number of orders.

I phrase it this way, because while there's an overarching story that will happen at set moments in time, I fear people might end up just ignoring the side content and end up hampering their experience completely by simply rushing through the main story present in the game and want to encourage people to explore all of the options at their disposal, to find that the side stuff is just as fleshed out as the main story itself in some regards!

Though these side stories don't exist in a vacuum--far from it! You'll often find that characters you meet in the side stories or items you obtain, etc. will end up interacting with other side stories (and the main story as explained in a recent dev log) in fun and surprising ways.

So please promise me that when you play, you end up exploring all of the options at your disposal, or I'll dispatch Ren to your house! That isn't an idle threat--I'll really do it!

Moving on, the more I flesh out the main story and get closer to wrapping up a lot of the key events, there's a lingering fear that eats away at me that the main scenario might just be TOO tightly contained. In that you go to very specific places several times over the course of the skirmish that Matt joins. And while a lot of epic things certainly happen--the locale doesn't change all that much. Since largely, Matt is constrained to Rhan for the duration of Chapter Two and it's been an experimental narrative to try and figure out in that regard. So he'll march out, do stuff, come back to Rhan, maybe march out again, etc. And shifting things around might be out of the question now since the backgrounds for a lot of CGs are tied to these same locations.

How do you guys feel about this? Are you happy with a lack of variety in the locales featured in main story, so long as there's still plenty of fun, dramatic moments? (Because boy there is a lot of them!) It's not to say that there's a lot of repeated content in the main story or anything--since there's still tons of unique story CG. It's been taking all of my willpower not to share them all and ruin the surprises! It's more just the backgrounds, and the places--where most of the skirmishes will end up taking place.

This is also another reason I talk about the side stories, since they offer so much variety in terms of locale and monster girls--and encourage you to take Matt sightseeing with optional quests as much as you can to see a lot of the world!

Anyways--that's what I'm most anxious about right now. I think I got so caught up in fleshing out all of the side-stuff that I didn't stop to think if I was being too restrictive with locations in the main story part. And didn't really stop to critically think about it until I reached writing the main story beyond its outline.

I suppose I'm hoping the combined experience of the main story and the side stuff will still offer quite a bit of variety for players!

Also, with February on the horizon, I hope you're looking forward to another lovey-dovey piece of Valentines Art! Any particular character you might like to see appearing next month? Here was last year's for reference! You gotta love that slimey gal~

There's still this month's bonus art to look forward to as well! I won't spoil it--but it features a character who hasn't appeared in a bonus art piece yet! Please look forward to it~

As always, feel free to post any questions, fears or concerns you may have in the comments below and I'll answer them promptly! I like to think of the comments section as an open forum, and I'll always try to answer when I can!

Until next time~