"And they lived happily ever after" might be the biggest cliffhanger of all.
In Auctorem Credimus is a metafictional sci-fantasy adventure story where you play as the main character's love interest, who takes over the MC's role after the story has ended.
This game was created for the @interact-if ranked game jam and won 1st Place in the Story and Plot Category! The jam's theme is "cliffhanger", so the game will end on one, but the game is written with a longer follow-up story in mind!
The game is complete at ~52,000 words, but please note that I will be updating the game in the future! See this devlog post for more details, and make sure to follow @ddwcaph-game for updates about the main story!
🚀 PLAY IN AUCTOREM CREDIMUS
Feeling purposeless and unfulfilled after your story has ended, you stumble upon an organization dealing with the same problem as you: the Custodians of Authorial Narrative Foundation (CANon). With nothing else to do but hope for your story's sequel or (hopefully not horrible) movie adaptation to come, the main character of your story (and canonical love interest) invites you to join the foundation and work as a biblio-anthropologist, traveling through various story worlds without the need to stay in-character.
So when your dream finally came true a few years later and people in your neighborhood start disappearing, you immediately grab your plot armor and prepare to defeat the villains once again. You've done it before, and you'll make sure they'll never do it again. At least, that's how sequels are supposed to go, right?
But when the main character and the villains turn out to be missing as well, you decide to take on the mantle of 'main character', join the CANon Timeline Anomaly Removal Department Intervention Squad (TARDIS), and write the sequel to your own story yourself.
In Auctorem Credimus features:
Customizable character: including age, gender, appearance, personality, and multiple character backgrounds
Choose your (non-canonical) relationship with the main character and the children under their care
Flirt or build friendships with the squad members
Explore different story worlds and break the fourth wall!
A follow-up spin-off story
Hayden Jekyll
The squad's de facto leader. A scientist-turned-antihero who can shapeshift into different animals, mythological or otherwise, by drinking a serum… until he was cursed by the goddess Circe to never be human again for his arrogance.
No one in the squad has ever been able to ask what his actual backstory is.
Jessica Armstrong
The squad's resident engineer, hacker, and explosives expert. She has a magically enchanted bionic arm that works like a glorified Swiss Army knife, which she uses to repair and maintain the Nautilus IX, the squad's dimensional starship that lets them travel to other story worlds.
A weary idealist, she decided to leave her home in the Regency era after a chance encounter with time traveler H.G. Wells, hoping to help less fortunate characters. The alternative was being caught in a love triangle between two pretentious idiots.
Phyrnne
The squad's anomaly behavior analyst, therapist, and psychologist. Phyrnne is an empathic blind ghost, who navigates the physical world through sensing other people's feelings, much like heat signatures.
She is the most caring of the squad, but don't mess with her unless you want to be possessed. Phyrnne changed her name as she doesn't want to be referred to as the ghost of La Llorona, whose children were drowned at the beginning of a forgotten murder mystery with no killer.
D
A 10,001-year-old vampire from a fifteen-year-old's abandoned fanfiction. Don't ask them how they got their name (it was a placeholder).
Seeking to redeem themselves from their feeding frenzy when they first learned about what happened to their story, they're now trying to improve the public perception of vampires by helping with charity and the children protagonists' orphanage, as well as promoting ethical feeding habits. They especially love to give the orphans gifts and souvenirs during their visits, after they once tried to feed on Santa Claus. Well, except teenagers. They're still bitter about that.
Dr. Rnst Gadsby
The squad's changeling xenoarchaeologist, and occultist by hobby. He accidentally summoned Phyrnne's spirit during his first mission, and eventually convinced her to join the TARDIS after haunting the squad for weeks.
Rnst mostly keeps to himself, although part of it is because he doesn't have a developed personality (or memory of his family) after being cut from a story with an ensemble cast—something he bonds with Phyrnne over. Together, they help each other discover their personalities (and maybe figure out Rnst's gender too).
Lorem Ipsum
The Nautilus IX's artificial intelligence. Lorem usually assists the squad with piloting the ship, as well as tracking down anomalies. Outside the ship, Lorem takes the form of a drone, which it likes to call the Futuristic Omniscient Operator Bibliographical Adjutant Rover (FOOBAR).
Lorem was a supercomputer developed during the Cold War and was eventually repurposed by Jessica. Lorem changes its personality every so often to mess with the squad (except Phyrnne who can mess with its systems), and likes to indulge its murderous tendencies when its Black ICE protocol is activated, turning dangerous anomalies to mouthless blob monsters.
Lorem also loves being a GM and takes the role a little too seriously.
🌐 Thank you, and always remember: In Auctorem Credimus
Ik it'll be a while (and for good reason), but I am SO excited to get to the part where f6e break the fourth wall. Like realizing that you're just a character for an audience is such a scary concept yet comforting in a way?? It's a genuine horror factor even tho it's not supposed to be
Hehe, yup! If you're excited, imagine how much more I am with all the stuff I haven't revealed yet (and the new developments I had since then).
But yeah, that's definitely gonna be one of the things I'm going to explore with the story and other characters. You can probably guess how each of the F6E members will take it, but there's actually another plot twist that I purposefully didn't mention during the last scene in IAC. 😛
I've already kinda hinted at it in Dear Diary, so I wonder how long it'll take people to realize the connection...
I do want to say that after the big reveal, the fourth wall stuff would more or less stay in the background, and won't be the focus unlike in IAC. Yes, the characters will be aware of it, and there will be plenty of adventuring, but the story will still be mostly slice-of-life with fantasy elements. At least, that's the plan right now. 😄
From left to right, top to bottom: Hayden, Jessica, D, Phyrnne, Rnst
If you missed it, I also made the F6E parents on the main blog!
As mentioned in that post, I tried to use as few CC as possible, but I'm satisfied with them for the most part. IAC badly needs some edits though, so some of their current descriptions don't fit anymore.
Anyway, Hayden's body definitely needs to be more hunched over, plus a bigger head and better proportions, but I can't really do much with him unfortunately.
I wanted Jess to wear a tank top, but the CC I found has limited options. It's the best/most fitting one I found though.
For D, I couldn't decide what eye color looks the best for them. I think their hair is fine too, but I could probably find a better one with CCs.
Other than Phyrnne not being blue, she's probably the one I'm most happy with. I turned her into a ghost that died from drowning via cheats, so that she creates a bit of water.
Rnst's design is the one I'm the most unsure of, but I do like the idea of an occultist having a cozy vibe. I wanted her to have more accessories though, but most of them don't appear with the sweater on so I just kinda gave up.
If anyone's interested, I might share them to the gallery later!
Since the IAC characters are aware that they're in a story, will the DDWCaPH! characters also eventually become aware that they're in a story as well?
Yup! But not at first. At the beginning, F6E will think that they just got transported into their own short stories, but I don't think it's much of a spoiler to say that they'll become aware after they get captured by Squad 626.
Of course, some of the characters already know, like Julie and Robert. F6E discovering the fourth wall is definitely NOT the biggest reveal when we get to that point though. 😉
Hey there! Yes, I love Phyrnne too, and I've also been thinking about her recently.
I like the idea of giving her a small garden of magical/medicinal plants in the ship (courtesy of Rnst) for her to water with her tears (and later her newfound water powers).
I wish I had more IAC news to share, but I'm thinking of drawing Phyrnne (and the rest of Squad 626) after I finish drawing all the other characters in DDWCaPH!
I'm still reading lol been a busy weekend but I seriously can't stop being astounded. Dude... I don't want to even see what your branching and code must look like. The amount of different variables you have is insane. I love all the 4th wall breaking and just throwing out typical narratives but also kinda making fun of some of them. Lol I do really find your writing humorous and although the new squad is a whole goddamn mess ngl the care is very much there and so is the emotions you'd expect from mc in this situation. I love the panic and anxiety because it's realistic and i like how reassuring and supportive the crew is. Also the flirting options for a single mc made Me laugh. MC forward af. 🤣
No clue when I'll get to finish this because my own little gremlin wants all my attention hehe but I just wanted to let you know I'm enjoying your writing very much. Thank u 💜😇
Hi again! Sorry for the late reply, I was on a week-long trip.
There isn't actually a lot of branching/variables (at least not as many as I would've liked, and I had to cut some of them due to the time restraints), but that's definitely something I want to expand in the future.
Anyway, I'm glad you find the fourth wall breaking funny! Especially because I know it's not an easy thing to get right. And your comment about MC's flirting options actually made me go back to reread all of them. It's been a while and I forgot how silly some of them were. 😅
Thank you for the message as well! Hope you have a good day! 😊
Do you realize how incredibly hilarious you are? I've just started this and I'm upset my stupid flat battery is keeping me from reading.
I laughed so much through customization alone. I can't even wait to finish reading this later.
I love it already. 🙈
Hehe, thank you! This was very nice to see pop up in my inbox. 😊
I'm curious to know what you think when you finish IAC! I was about to mention something about the customization, but I didn't want to spoil it just in case. 😛
On another note...
I know I haven't been active on this blog lately, but I'll share some new developments soon!
Are Julie, Maggie, and MC’s father humans? Or are they a different species? Sorry if this is too spoilers!
Hello, apologies if I took a long while to answer your question, but I guess I have a good excuse, since Dear Diary MC will now have the option to choose their Ancestry Traits in the next update!
So to answer your question: not necessarily!
MC can have human, elven, orcish, dwarven, halfling, gnomish, goblin, draconic, or fae ancestry. And depending on their favorite genre, they can also be a demigod, or have werewolf/vampire/nephilim/cambion heritage.
Do note that I specifically mention "heritage" and "ancestry" as the exact specifics are another spoilery matter entirely (and may change later in development anyway).
With all the new changes in development, IAC needs a complete rewrite (not just edits), so unfortunately rewriting IAC is now a lower priority for me, especially because certain details might change in the future again. But everything in IAC still holds up for the most part!
The wait is finally over. Grab your plot armor, Chapter 4 and 5 of Dear Diary, We Created a Plot Hole! is finally here!
🚌 Play it here! 🚌
To celebrate the release, a +50% ✨EXP Bonus Event will be running for the next couple of weeks!
The full change log is over 500 lines long, so here's an overview of all the new stuff:
🌈 UPDATE HIGHLIGHTS
~ 509,000 total wordcount (including code)
~ 278,000 additional words (including code)
~ New average playthrough of 115,000 words!
New Stuff to Discover!
52 New Secrets to discover, 8 New Trinkets to collect, 12 New Achievements
30 New Character Traits, 15 New Heritage Passives, 3 New Phobias, 16 New Status Effects
3 New Main Quests, 12 New Sidequests
and 1 New Song to sing along to!
New Scenes!
Introductions to Wayne, Lily, and JM's parents!
New exclusive bestfriend scenes!
Get a sneak peek into the story worlds you'll visit in future, in the Story Exchange!
Revamped crush confession scene with your twin!
Steal a kiss on the cheek from your crush!
Catch a preview of Chapter 6!
New Choices and Customization!
Choose the name of MC's dad!
Choose a second bestfriend, other than your twin (and give them a custom nickname)!
You can now choose to have two different pronoun sets!
Choose a mild swear word for your MC
Added B as a crush option
Tons of Diary and Stat Improvements!
New, updated, and expanded character diary entries!
New unlockable codex entries!
Write custom post-scripts in your diary!
Added new toggle settings for simple/detailed view of traits/passives, and background transitions
New trait option that reduces the frequency and gives additional context to Filipino expressions
Improved diary and stat notification layout
So Much More!
Added lots of new character art!
Added gameplay tips!
Lots of references to In Auctorem Credimus!
Roselyna is now approximately 20% more huggable!
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I've also updated the Trinkets & Secrets Guide, as well as the Twin Character Templates!
If you encounter any errors, or have any questions or feedback, feel free to send me an ask! I'll go through my ask backlog after I have recovered from the update.
Has anyone found out the references to some of the IAC characters in the latest update yet? There's a bunch of minor ones, and a really big one with major implications that I'm waiting for people to find. 👀
I'm glad I didn't update IAC first, because IAC is going to need a lot of edits after this. 😅
Do you remember what happened after your In Auctorem Credimus MC woke up after packing up for their expedition?
Yup. Originally, Dear Diary MC just wakes up to some tropical snow and aurora borealis in the sky, before the bedtime story villains invade the school through a plot hole. But what if they wake up as a 9-year-old on the date of the cursed fieldtrip?
It's one-half flashback, one-half time travel, and a whole load of anachronisms. Everyone in F6E still remembers everything that happened after that, and everyone still has what they had before that: all the trinkets you've collected and stuff you've written in your diary, and all the gifts Rosie received on her 12th birthday.
I love this idea for a bunch of reasons:
You get to experience a little bit of MC's backstory without going through a flashback, and it opens up a lot of interesting character interactions and choices that wouldn't be possible otherwise, such as MC being short enough to ride the Paddy Express again, or pretending to have never seen your bestfriend before.
MC and Twin's big fight is also interesting to look at: if it hasn't happened yet in this timeline, did they actually fight before, or are they fighting about something that they only think will happen? What if you pretend to have no memory of it? And with all the knowledge that you have, can you prevent it from happening again? (Which is doubly interesting for me, as resetting the day through the diary is one of the concepts I wanted to explore before I did the rewrite)
And of course, I get to write MC and F6E as 9 year olds again. Well, not really since everyone in F6E still retains their memory, but after aging them up from 9 in the first draft, I never thought I'd get to do that again unless it's a flashback. Plus, fighting the villains is going to be more intimidating when you're suddenly back to your younger self.
Also, I needed an excuse to draw chubby Wayne with a missing tooth. Hehe.
Not to mention, doing this actually reduces the amount of branches I need to write (finally a decision that lessens the amount of work I need to do for once).
And don't worry: MC and everyone in F6E reverts back to their original ages at the start of Volume 2.
What do you all think? Are you excited for Chapter 7?
138,000 words later, the Chapter 4 Public Beta is finally ready!
✨ CHAPTER 4 UPDATE HIGHLIGHTS:
~ 369,000 total wordcount (including code)
~ 138,000 additional words (including code)
~ New average playthrough of ~96,000 words!
21 New Secrets to discover, 20 New Character Traits, 17 New Passives, 1 New Phobia, 5 New Trinkets to collect, 8 New Achievements, 3 New Main Quests, 3 New Sidequests, 7 New Status Effects, and 1 New Song to sing along to!
Tito Nestor, Tita Stephanie, and Lily's moms' introductions!
Get a sneak peek into the story worlds you'll visit in future, in the Story Exchange!
You can now choose the name of MC's dad! (+Diary Entry!)
You can now choose a second bestfriend if you pick your twin as your bestfriend!
New choices and bestfriend scenes for JM and Lily in Chapter 3!
Added a new trait option that reduces the frequency of Filipino expressions and gives additional context.
A lot of references to In Auctorem Credimus!
Roselyna is now approximately 20% more huggable!
The full change log can be found by selecting "What’s New?” in the start menu. It's way too long to list here!
How do I join the Public Beta?
You can join the public beta by joining the DDWCaPH! Discord Server. From there, go to the #roles channel and ask Ma'am Bianes to give you the Open Beta Tester role and get access to the link and the discussion/bug report channels.
Why limit the beta test in the Discord?
Let me begin by saying that I didn't want to do this. But the last time I did a strictly private beta, I got ABSOLUTELY ZERO feedback weeks after release until I explicitly asked for it.
This is the best compromise I can think of for now, that should still be convenient for most people.
Chapter 4 also isn't 100% complete yet. There are still a bunch of choices I haven't written yet, but I'm leaving them for a later update because I'm not in the right headspace to finish them, and after 138k words, I need a break from writing.
When will Chapter 4 be out for everyone?
I'm not really sure. Depending on how well this beta goes, it might be after a couple weeks, or after a month.
I also want to draw some new character art, so I might wait until those are done as well.
Again, depending on how well the public beta goes, I may keep doing this, or go back to doing private beta tests. If I do go back to private beta testing, Chapter 4 will be the LAST PUBLIC UPDATE until Volume 1 is fully complete.
If you want the next chapters to still be in public, be sure to send in your playthrough codes and feedback in the survey! They really mean a lot to me, but I'm not releasing chapters publicly anymore if I'm getting absolutely zero reception.
And to the person who leaked an earlier version of the demo: I hope you liked that buggy mess. 😊 Send me your playthrough codes, will you? I'd really appreciate it.
The urban fantasy show I actually want to see is a hospital drama with a dedicated wing for supernatural illnesses.
Vampirism. Lycanthropy. Cheap spells gone wrong. A woman brought in for her prenatal has to be told her baby is a lindworm. Someone is literally being followed by the anthropomorphic personification of the Black Death.
Someone somewhere out there is having their perception of the world irreparably shattered by the knowledge that magic is real, and at the other side is a team of doctors who have to roll their eyes and pull out Grimm’s Complete Fairy Tales because some high school kid tried to go Carrie with a cheap spellbook and turn all the kids at prom into frogs, and the doctors have to wrangle a couple dozen teenagers into admitting if they have a true love who can break the spell.
I want the hospital director to be some dark entity that feeds on human misery but figured out that if you successfully treat the source of the misery then instead of hunting you down as an abomination the humans start bringing more miserable people to your house en masse and things kinda got out of hand from there.
The legend claims that when this woman appears she asks for a ride, and after a while when the victim tries to see her face, he notices that she has instead a skull with horrible teeth.
The legend says that “La Sayona” was a young woman who lived in a small town in the plains of Venezuela and was the most beautiful girl there. She was married to a great man, caring and loving. She and her husband had a baby boy. One day, she was swimming naked in a nearby river and a villager saw her. After that, the man would always follow her and watch her bathe in the river. One day she saw him and told him to leave her alone; he ignored her, and instead told her that he was there to warn her: “Your husband is having an affair with none other than your mother,” he said. She ran home and found her husband asleep with the baby in his arms. Blind with anger, she burned the house with them inside. Villagers could hear their screams while she ran to her mother’s house. She found her on the patio and attacked her with a machete, striking her in the stomach. As the mother bled to death, she cursed her daughter telling her that from then on she would have to avenge all women by killing their unfaithful husbands. And from that day forward the daughter became “La Sayona”.
In other versions of the tale, Sayona appears to men working in the jungle. She manifests when her unsuspecting victims talk to their workmates about sex or think of women they left behind in their hometown. Sayona appear to such men, assuming the likeness of beautiful woman, or a loved one, and lures them into the forest so she could reveal her animal-like features and devour them, or mangle them, leaving their wretched bodies for their companions to find.
Follow @mecthology for more lores and legends. DM for pic credit. Source: Wikipedia. https://www.instagram.com/p/CnhTuM0NSra/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=
If Maggie and Julie are twins, and Dear Diary MC is a twin, does being twins run in the family?
I haven't really thought about Maggie and Julie's parents (Dear Diary MC's grandparents), but I guess you could say that. Or at least I like the idea of it.
Twins (or multiples in general) are very fascinating to me especially as characters, so they aren't the only twins you'll see in the story.
The only thing I've decided is that there'll be no identical twins in the story because I find them overrated in media (not that there's anything wrong with them necessarily).
I've already posted a sneak peek on the Discord a while ago, but I finally decided to make a video showcase/commentary about one of my older projects, Super School Bus! 🚌 (Sorry if the video is a little loud.)
Super School Bus is an educational flash/mobile game I made back in 2019 for a school project, featuring characters from DDWCaPH!
It's mostly finished, but it's a little buggy and is missing a few features. The video above only showcases the first three levels, so let me know if you want to see the rest! Maybe you can convince me to code in the missing dialogue in the last few levels. 😊
And in case you missed it, here's a preview of the 2D animated trailer I made for DDWCaPH!
I talked about the ending of Volume 1 here a little bit, but I haven't actually outlined Chapter 7 yet, so I've been brainstorming recently and thought about Super School Bus again.
Originally, there wasn't supposed to be any flying school buses until the last chapter of Volume 3. But I thought, that's way too long to wait for it—it would be a big disappointment, especially when it's in the cover art. But now I've found a way to include it in Volume 1 while also solving one of my problems with the climactic chapter...
The school bus in the story has always been a normal school bus. It would be repaired and upgraded by the gnomes in Escheria, but it would only appear again during the climax of Roselyna's story world (the scene in the cover art), and then upgraded again later by Jessica (as implied by one of the choices in IAC).
It hasn't occurred to me until now, but since LiteraTours is handling the LCU fieldtrips, it would also make sense to have the school buses be from LT as well. And you know what that means—talking and flying school bus with weapons!
Of course the kids have no idea about the bus's secrets, but the security feature will get activated when the villains blows up the bridge the bus is on during the chase, and the bus starts flying. The villains chasing them through different story worlds still happens, but now the bus is flying and you get control of a weapon, so you'll be able to shoot dinosaurs, aliens, or spider trains that join the chase.
And to incorporate a little bit of SSB gameplay, maybe you'll need to answer some trope/literature-related questions (instead of math and science questions) to fire the weapon. Hehe. 😛 Although you might be able to bypass the weapon's security feature if you go to the Chapter 5 Investigation Branch.
This would also solve my other problem of the kids having no real way to fight back against the villains that isn't too violent. Well, you could also steal some weapons from the villains and use those instead, but it's always nice to have an alternative. Plus, who wouldn't want to shoot a laser gun from a flying school bus?
This would mean Squad 626 should be able to track the bus a little easier once they find out, so I'll also need to mention that in the edits.
I'm still not sure about Mrs. Agustin, but she'll probably have a different name since Agustin is part of Rosie's full name and they're definitely not related.
