Progress Update + Roadmap + Complimentary Chapter 3 Excerpt + Fanart
Hello, and welcome to interim hell!
Preface: this should be an interesting (read: busy) summer, so I'll be trying to get as much done in the late spring as I possibly can. Getting right to work on Chapter 3! The wait times may be indefinite, but I am not someone who likes to put a WIP on hiatus, and am here to reassure you that progress is being made.
By the time release day came, after reading, revising, editing, and playtesting the spring update for so many months (in between headaches, etc.), I was not at all certain how it would be received by returning players.
So thank you again for the kind and lovely messages both on and after April 1st - and your inestimable patience in waiting for Chapter 2.
But this has taught me a valuable lesson.
I will need more beta readers for Chapter 3.
There is no getting around it.
Playtesting Chapter 2 this year nearly broke me. I hesitate to give an exact word count because for the most part, I type everything directly into VScode, but the total is 100,000+ for sure, and my Chapter 3 outline is longer than the last one.
I had to beg my alpha reader and one of my lovely betas to run through the chapter a few too many times, especially toward the end.
They were kind enough to do it and I owe them my life, obviously, but it might be time to open my arms (and my demo) to more early and last-minute feedback.
This is only mildly terrifying, I assure you.
More on that another day.
This is going to take a bit more time than the patch I put out for typos.
It will include some audio tweaks, extra flavour text in both chapters, and the two alternate paths to acquiring your MC's notebook! Yes, you will be able to ask the servant and the guard for a notebook instead.
I may also add a few new questions to the informal Q+A with U at the end of the chapter, if time and mental space allows...
Luckily I had some Chapter 3 scenes in progress from last year, before I knew exactly what Chapter 2 would become! That said, they will need heavy revisions and a lot of content must be drafted from scratch.
Which I am in the process of doing right now!
I am VERY excited to share all of these scenes...
But it will be another long episode, so Chapter 3 may be better off split into more than one update this time - still deciding and might even put out a poll on this if the first half or third of the chapter is looking playable later this spring / summer!
This is all very tentative and there are no set dates for the sake of my fairly fragile health (more deadlines don't help unless I know I can reach them), but this is the order in which I plan to progress.
Other than that, everything else is pretty self-explanatory.
Another update will be posted when there is something of significance to share, and I'll be replying to a few asks that have been sitting in my inbox - hopefully soon!
"Effie," I hear you saying. "Chapter 2 took you almost an entire year to complete. Are you going to make us wait that long again?"
And to that I say, "God, I hope not."
Life has been crazy, so I have no predictions for the future, but I would very much like to present you with the next chapter in a more reasonable time frame! Whether that's in 1 month, 3 months, or 6 months, who knows, but keep your fingers crossed for me.
I have 3-4 scenes in progress, and several more outlined.
Accomplished a bit of coding last week as well - trying something new for the introductory scene in Chapter 3... of course... because I have an irrepressible desire to make things more difficult when I already know what works.
Before you read any further, @iv-plays-if recently posted THIS amazing artwork of Lenity and Umyra from Chapter 1! I am still overwhelmed, tbh.
If you want my thoughts on it, I left a longer comment under the post! It is impossible to overstate how beautiful this art style is, and so detailed. [Currently very glad my main blog can like posts and leave comments again - I will always be haunted by the shadow of 2025 lol.]
Please enjoy, and check out the rest of the blog!
CONSES ARE QUENCING + COFFEE WITH Z
As proof that I have been hard at work on Chapter 3, I offer you TWO excerpts! The first with U, which only your most chaotic (or angry) MCs will ever see.
I am calling it the "FAFO" scene:
U watches you seize in silence for a very, very long time.
Stunned, maybe.
Or maybe enjoying the sight.
You don't know. You don't have any thoughts left in your head. You are back to the beginning again. The undoing. Unravelling. What you were, before you remembered yourself. You wish you could go back further, to a time before pain.
An age passes, slowly.
Then, they kneel...
And when they take your face in their cool hands, you are frothing at the mouth, blood-tinged foam spattering the front of their tunic.
Whatever could MC have done?
And here, as promised, is another excerpt. This time with the not-so-mysterious nightly visitor in an avoidant MC's restless dreams - or are you visiting them in theirs?
"Please... you haven't finished your coffee."
THAT'S ALL YOU GET MORE TO FOLLOW LATER I PROMISE.
