Introducing Project #2: A Promise Best Left Unkept (Patreon)

Blurb

Prompted into action by the promise he made to his girlfriend a year ago, Harry finally made a huge breakthrough in his quest for success by scoring a major deal for his company, in doing so setting into motion his inevitable promotion. But what he didn’t foresee is that the byproduct of his unshakable resolve would unintentionally invite an undesirable presence into his life. The representative of the subcontracting company—his old bully from high school.

Mystery

Like The Edge Of, there will be multiple perspectives with the main perspective being a ‘mystery.’ But compared to The Edge Of where the antagonist is somewhat vague at times, in A Promise Best Left Unkept, it’s pretty clear who’s the bad guy or what’s ultimately happening behind the scene, which makes the mystery elements more about the ‘why,’ ‘when’ and ‘how’ rather than the ‘who’ and ‘if.’

You will have the choice between playing solely the main protagonist’s—Harry’s—perspective (mystery), or all three perspectives (Harry, Laura, Aya) at the same time. Also, all three perspectives will be implemented in parallel instead of one at a time like I did with The Edge Of.

Writing

One of my shortcomings with The Edge Of was that I constrained myself with a set of events and rules that sometimes made it impossible for me to create hot circumstances or moments. I’m used to write stories where I think of a concept that I find compelling and conceptualize an ending that satisfies me before starting any writing. With The Edge Of, I realized that the way I usually tackle my writing might not be the best for porn. Or it might. I’m still not entirely sure. I’m still pretty much learning. So this story is entirely improvised. I’m still not sure of how most endings will actually end. Hopefully, it won’t be a complete disaster.

Endings

The lack of multiple endings in The Edge Of seemed to disappoint quite a few people. With The Edge Of it was a bit difficult to implement multiple endings without giving away the mystery. This time around though, endings should be much easier to implement.

When I first started writing A Promise Best Left Unkept, I had the intention of splitting the game at the very beginning (in the first 20k words) and create two different scenarios on how the cheating would essentially occur. Here’s a very simple schema of what I had in mind.

Unfortunately, it didn’t take long for me to realize that branching the story in such a way would make the game a lot longer than what I had intended (since there are already two routes, one for each female character). So I had to cross one of the branches out.

Instead, I decided to focus on making more endings, but on a smaller scale. For now, I have five endings planned for Laura’s route, though nothing is definitive.

Right now, I’m focusing on Laura’s route, so the choice to switch for Aya’s route will be grayed out at first. I’m unfortunately not talented enough to write two distinct routes simultaneously. Sorry about that.

Also, while I did remove one branch, remnants of my intention to branch out the story are still present in the script. Some might notice that situations at the beginning of the story are perfect for the implementation of choices. Just know that my intention was probably to have choices there to begin with.

Artist

You might have already realized with the cover of the game that the artist behind it is the same as the first artist who drew the CGs for The Edge Of. I am fortunate enough to be working with him again. Hopefully, this time, he will be able to keep working with me until the completion of the project.

Release

At the moment, I’m still waiting for the sprites of the male characters, but unless something goes very wrong, I think I should be able to release the prologue of the game in the middle of next month. I still have a lot of things to think about, and I’m always scared that an important detail eluded me somehow, so I won’t make any promise, but my intention is to make a seamless transition between The Edge Of and A Promise Best Left Unkept.