Solace ☀️

victim of musical and choice games brainrot, they/them & he/him

[karnathewresa]

"I wanted to get to know you."

Trevelyan laughs, then bites it back as though it came out despite himself. "Oh, that's a pretty thing to say," he says. "I don't know if I was expecting that. I hope you mean it."

(Saw @hpowellsmith posted about having a horrid day so! I hope a fan art could cheer you up a bit!!)

[if-seal]

Hey there IF Seal, new(ish) author here with some confused rambles over interactions, marketing, and general community stuff.

Honestly I love reading and writing interactive fiction so regardless of likes and stuff I will finish my story BUT I cannot help but notice I'm just not getting a whole lotta traction on my demo.

I frequently see Tumblr pages that don't even have a demo released yet get several dozens/hundreds of likes and retweets yet I have an actual demo out (along with intro posts, RO information, progress updates, etc) but rarely get over 10 notes. Furthermore these IF pages with "Demo TBA" seem to get quite a few asks too and I don't anymore (side note, anyone reading this, if you notice an IF blog that you like isn't getting many asks then do send them some, they would probably really appreciate it).

It's just very confusing to me. I know it's still early on for me so people will probably read and interact once I get over 100k words (am close) but I just don't know what I'm doing wrong and why demo TBA ppl get so much attention when it is well known that many of these projects just get abandoned. The few people that I do get comments from seem to like my IF and express excitement over it so I think it's more of a reach problem ?

Dear Community-Seeking Friend,

I entirely understand your confusion about demoless blogs ending up with a lot of attention. I don't really get the appeal myself - while I understand being excited about a concept, there is not much way of knowing what the game will be like without at least some excerpts. I believe it comes down to:

-people seeing something they're excited about in principle, and wanting to encourage the writer

-people seeing their friends get excited, and wanting to join in and enthuse as a community

-the fact that a game concept has no way of disappointing you if it does not exist yet: it is all endless potential

Now. Does it feel confusing and perhaps even difficult to see that happen when you are sharing something real? Of course. But it is reality, and people being excited about an idea doesn't guarantee that those same people would have been equally excited about your work. That is a difficult aspect of this to swallow, but it can be rather freeing at the same time. There is not much that can be done about it directly other than trying to avoid comparison (the thief of joy) and focusing on the fact that you have made something and taken the plunge to share it, which is a genuine achievement in itself.

There are some other things you can do, perhaps. Put yourself out there to get in touch with other writers at a similar stage to you through your project, play their work, let them know what you think. Ask players what they think about certain aspects of your game. Try to focus on what you love about your game and the intrinsic rather than extrinsic reward of making something new that did not exist before.

The latter is hard. I know it is. I have many letters here about feeling vulnerable about audience (look under "player investment and engagement", especially poor potato's "lack of audience engagement makes me want to quit") and I do not have easy answers. Making art is vulnerable. You do not mention whether you are making commercial art, but that is emotionally complicated as well. I truly hope that your writing finds its people.

[smilesbag]

if you zoom in on ned then spider-man brand new day is literally like what if you felt your heart reaching out for another person so fondly and fiercely that you build an app that connects millions of people just so you can know where he's been and you want to find out who he is behind his many masks just so you can say thank you (and be safe and i love you) and you have a secret handshake in the well of your memory and a lego figurine on your desk and there's another aspect of those memories that your mind can't really hold onto but you keep trying to build a life around those empty spaces and then one day you're eating a sandwich and a man tells you his name and oh.... how could you ever have forgotten your best friend?

[enthyrea]

- i bet we were fun.

- like you wouldn’t believe.

[nicothespy]

oh hey there percy jackson spider-man AU nobody asked for

[shoomlah]

Some of my sprite sheets from Codename: WhoD'nit, a murder mystery visual novel set in the Myst/D'ni universe that Eric talked about during Cyan's State of the Union presentation last weekend! Fingers crossed we can revisit this someday, it was real dear to both Harrison and myself.

[zencaia]

Market trip~ (part 2 - end)

After buying everything on the list, they opted to enjoy some delicious crepes before heading back. :>

Fan art of @hpowellsmith's Crème de la Crème

[hpowellsmith]

I always fall in love with the light in @zencaia's art... (and also the incredible cuteness)

[hpowellsmith]

Something nice

This week I got my royalties through for the month of June, when my games were on sale for Pride for a week. I had double the royalties that I'd had the previous month, which considering how big the discounts were, shows how big a sales boost there was.

I'm always so immensely grateful that my games are continuing to reach people, and that you're enjoying the queerness in them. Long may we make queer art and spread it far and wide! I'm so looking forward to showing you more of it, hopefully soon!

-

And if you missed it in June, I'll repeat what I said then:

Also, there's an interview up in which I talk about my thought processes writing queer characters, how my approach has evolved over time, and lots more. I'm wordy when talking about writing queer characters and queerness in settings (and, well, talking about anything to do with writing), so if you have any thoughts or questions about this, or about my approaches in general, I'd love to hear them!

[shoomlah]

Some of my concept art for Project: Anglerfish (the Myst game I was art directing back at Cyan) that was shared in Cyan's recent State of the Union presentation at Mysterium last week!

A lot of the appeal of this pitch was the idea of shifting, dynamic environments—vs. the more frozen worlds of previous Myst games—so a fair amount of our exploration was finding ways to pull that off with lighting, atmosphere, and some more... drastic measures.

[if-seal]

hi seal!! first of all what is your favourite seal? Im more of a sea lion guy myself. Ive been recently trying to write a gender-locked IF with a male MC. Ive been blocking myself from writing further as i feel that many readers would have negative opinions towards this writing choice. Yet i feel like i cant bring myself to add a female MC even though i want to appeal to a bigger audience! thank you for any help in advance!

Dear Male-MC-writing Friend,

I am a harbour seal so that is my favourite, not to toot my own horn... but my Antarctic pals the Weddell seals are some of my best friends.

Friend, I will start with one comment. When you are writing long-form IF with a non-set player character, not including a choice of gender for the PC will reduce your audience. It would be foolish of me to pretend otherwise.

However. Greater specificity in the PCs you're writing about can bring an enthusiastic audience who are excited about that specificity.

Besides, if you are intrigued and invested in writing this PC with this characteristic, why twist yourself into a sea-lion-esque pretzel doing something you do not want to do? This is a creative hobby, you are not running on a churn-writing treadmill. Write what you want to write, with this seal's blessing, and best of luck.

[magicatthemasthead]

Wheat Googling #7: how do I create a *slightly* less classist naval hierarchy?

Good morning!

Over the last few weeks of googling, the crew of the ship in my game has changed massively. I had originally imagined it as being roughly the same as the crew of the Endymion (the ship on which it’s based) - about 300 people, a handful of officers, a sawbones, and a few carpenters and sailmakers. Now, I have a crew of 87, 60 of whom have to be available to crew the six watches I have invented. The remaining 27 people have to cover the full time therapist, bard, medical team of five, and all the warrant and command officers. So today’s mission is to figure out what career progression in my fictional navy actually looks like.

And I want to come up with something that allows me to think about class. In my game, I have done my best to create a world free from most forms of prejudice - there’s no sexism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, ageism, racism. That’s because at the moment, these things just make me feel tired. I suspect at some point I’ll want to write something that allows me to engage with some of these issues more deeply, but right now, I want to imagine a world where they just aren’t a thing. Class, though, is something I am currently thinking about a lot. It’s something I think is often overlooked in art because most of the people who work in the arts are from middle class backgrounds. In the scripted arts - film, TV, radio - where I’ve done most of my work so far, only about 8.5% of people are from working class backgrounds. That means that the vast majority of depictions of working class people you’ve seen in films, on TV, on the radio, were written, directed, and produced by middle class people having a bit of a guess. 

I want to think about class, and hidden barriers, and this feels like the right project to consider it. For one thing, class is basically integral to an Age of Sail setting, with its two distinct cultures: the upper class officers’ mess, and the much larger working class crew. For another, the modern navy has, I discovered, made a bunch of really proactive and surprisingly effective attempts to change this.

Tumblr Special this week will be about why the ROs in my game chose to become commissioned officers. Scroll to the bottom of the post for that bit!

What did the British Royal Navy do?

A British frigate in the early 1800s was highly stratified. Where you ate, where you slept, and who had to call you ‘sir’ was assertively enforced. I have tried, but I can’t improve on this brilliantly clear chart I got from Wikipedia that shows all the relative ranks.

I can’t fit all that information into the alt text, so here is a screen-reader friendly version of those parts of the chart that are relevant to this discussion.

Top: captain

Senior wardroom officers: lieutenants, captain of marines, master

Junior wardroom officers: lieutenant of marines, purser, surgeon, chaplain

Cockpit mates (officers in training): master’s mates, surgeon’s mates, midshipmen, clerk

Warrant officers: master, purser, surgeon, chaplain, gunner, boatswain, carpenter, armourer, ropemaker, caulker, master at arms, cooper, sailmaker

The chart marks the cockpit mates in green, and notes that irrespective of their nominal (mid-to-low) rank, they were considered to be officers in training, and often referred to as “young gentlemen” to emphasise the class and prospects differences between them and the other senior petty officers.

It is important to note that, technically, it was possible for any ordinary sailor to rise through the ranks from seaman to captain (see Thomas Cook for an example). But during the period of the Napoleonic Wars things got more classist, and it became increasingly hard to pass for lieutenant if you could not also “pass for a gentleman”, as they put it. That is, be from the upper classes.

What were warrant officers?

Basically, warrant officers were sailors who had been granted a warrant to perform a special job on the ship: surgery, gunnery, and carpentry are three of the big ones. And, presumably because it was pretty vital that these roles were done by people who really knew what they were doing, their warrants were granted by a vocational board. A surgeon’s warrant was appointed by the Board of Surgeons, the gunner’s by the Ordnance Board, and a ship’s carpenter had often spent years qualifying as a shipwright before going to sea. Essentially, warrant officers were a highly skilled middle rank between officers and ordinary sailors.

I completely love this fact. In a service that had inherited a rigid class system in which the small group of people actually in charge of the ship were drawn from the upper classes if not the actual aristocracy, they did at least have the sense to make sure that the level below command was made up of people who definitely knew how to do their jobs.

What does the Royal Navy do now?

These days, about 30% of commissioned officers in the Royal Navy started out as ratings (ordinary enlisted sailors). A pretty dramatic improvement on the 1800s. And, having looked at their brD 3 (giant book of rules), it looks to me like this figure is the result of a sincere and protracted effort to make the service more meritocratic. I especially enjoyed this line, which is about helping sailors who want to gain a commission:

b. Encouragement. Candidates are to be given every encouragement, help and advice to reach the required standards.

There are multiple schemes available for ratings at different professional stages to get onto officer training. If you are a basic rating, you can apply at any time, and you will be in competition with everyone else who applies from outside the service. If you already have a specialism and rank, you can apply to a separate scheme and, if accepted, you acquire a commissioned rank and level of seniority appropriate to your years of service - no danger of warrant officers with 15 years’ professional experience getting shoved in as Midshipmen. If you’re a Senior Command Warrant Officer, you go in as a lieutenant with three years’ seniority. 

They also have libraries aboard, and people whose job is to support the crew’s additional learning desires. The books include fiction and general interest of course, but also GCSE textbooks and books about naval leadership. This latter was followed by this comment, which I enjoyed:

Whilst the temptation may be to place books on a shelf in the Wardroom, it must be stressed that the intent is to provide access for all.

Both the intent and the temptation here are instructive, I feel.

Of course, what it says in the official guidance may not be representative of what actually happens. In particular, I think it’s significant that all paths from rating to commission require the support of your commanding officer, which could be a problem if your commanding officer is a snob. 

Still, intentions can tell you a lot. Especially because nothing about this document makes me think it is intended as a PR stunt. It is full of impenetrable acronyms and sub-paragraphs. And what can tell you even more is that 30% figure. I wonder how many other fields have 30% of all leadership roles filled by working class people. A research question for another day.

What shall I do?

I’ve settled on a system that is about halfway between the 19th century navy’s, ‘technically it’s possible to get promoted to captain’, and the modern navy’s, ‘no, seriously, we’ve put loads of work into making this actually happen’. I am going to do this by making two major changes to the way my navy works.

All officers must hold a vocational warrant in addition to their commission (I’ve never liked the idea of people being trained exclusively for ‘being in charge’ anyway).

All sailors are actively encouraged to train for a warrant, and all sailors with a warrant for a Senior Vocation are may attempt to pass for lieutenant.

The Seven Senior Vocations

The chiefs of these seven vocations mess in the wardroom. You must choose one of these if you want to pass for lieutenant.

Navigator (master)

Medico (surgeon)

Bard (in charge of knowing what to do on land, and culture and entertainment stuff)

Gunner

Carpenter

Alienist (psychiatrist)

Purser

There are eleven seats at the wardroom table. Before it can set sail, a ship must have at least one chief for each of these vocations, a bosun, and at least three lieutenants. Ideally, the lieutenants and bosun will not also be required to be the chief of their vocation, because they won’t have a lot of time to do that role alongside their other duties. But this is flexible and depends on who the captain can get at the time. If a lieutenant/bosun doesn’t end up also being the chief of their vocation, it is important that they have a competent mate to delegate a lot of the work to. 

All this should create a system that sounds meritocratic on paper, but in practice will still allow a pernicious class system to hold sway. This is largely because out of these seven professions, only two can be acquired purely through apprenticeship: carpenter and gunner. The other five require a university education. And, unlike the modern Royal Navy, my fictional navy will not fund a university degree. So if you are from a working class background, it’s scholarship or bust. And scholarships are rare. 

I’ll add a few other soft barriers too. Lieutenants’ uniforms are expensive and have to be bought from a licensed shop; if you hold a carpenter’s or gunner’s warrant, the Captains on your interview panel are likely to be more sceptical of you. And, of course, you can’t even apply without your own captain’s blessing. All this is, I think, enough to make it so that although technically all these roles are equal, the majority of commissioned officers come from middle or upper class families.

Naturally, I have made a chart…

You should be able to click on and zoom into the chart to make it more legible.

Career trajectories

My aim here is to come up with something that allows for a familiar setup for those who already like Age of Sail novels (which always have teenaged Midshipmen running around), and which is more meritocratic than the historical reality, but not as meritocratic as it might seem.

Age 14 - 17 - Youngster: You can enlist as a rating (ordinary sailor), or if your family is wealthy or well connected, you can sign on as a Mid. In both cases, you’ll get a pretty good general seafaring education, but in the latter, you’ll get opportunities to shadow all seven chiefs, and formal lessons in the basics of all seven vocations. You’ll also be invited to dine in the wardroom sometimes, and you’ll have a different uniform. There will be an assumption on board that you are aiming for a commission. NB: the captain can promote ordinary ratings to the mids, but numbers are limited and this is discretionary.

Age 17 - 21 - Apprentice: You are encouraged to pick a vocation and train for your warrant. Most mids leave the sea for three years at this point to study for one of the upper class vocations, though all of them have to come back for a certain amount of vocational training as well. Most ordinary ratings choose gunner or carpenter if they are particularly skilled or ambitious, or one of the less challenging warrants (sailmaker, cook, armourer etc.) if not. Many are happy to remain as straightforward shiphandlers, or prioritise a purely sailorly profession such as becoming a yeo of the sheets, or a captain of a watch.

Age 21 plus: Junior warrant officer: At this point, most people who chose to study for a vocation are ready to apply for a junior warrant. I’ve based this on the older concept of a journeyman - someone who is past apprentice stage, but not yet a master. This is sufficient for any blue or green role on the chart below the row with the alienist’s mate on it. The two bottom rows don’t actually require a warrant, but are almost always filled by someone who has one.

Age 25 plus - Senior warrant officer: This stage is not essential. If you want to, you can apply to the relevant board for a senior warrant. This usually involves some kind of exam, though in the case of some of the more practical vocations this can be a practical exam, and testimonials from your captain and department head. You get more money and respect than the junior warrant officers, though your actual job might look pretty similar. This step is a requirement for holding a ‘chief’ role or above.

Age 25 plus - Lieutenant: Also not essential. If you have a warrant for one of the seven vocations, you can choose to attempt to pass for lieutenant.

Age 25 plus - Chief: Also not essential. If you hold a warrant for any vocation, you can apply to be the chief of that vocation. This is an appointment, not a rank.

I’m quite happy with this I think. Cosmetically, it will look familiar: posh teens running around in fancy uniforms, skilled working class artisans, occasional promotions from the crew. And in subtle ways the upper class will still be holding onto its advantage, not least because every aspiring lieutenant in my fictional world will have to stand in front of four captains who will be able to tell at a glance if they are ‘one of us’.

Enjoy the rest of your day!

Grace xx

PS: Which vocation would you choose? At present only three are available for players to choose in my game, but if there is a popular one not on my list, I might add it.

Next time

Having finalised the crew, next time I want to show you the diagrams I’ve drawn for the different decks of the ship - and explain why I chose the ship I did as a model.

This week’s interesting link

Sue Diamond’s PhD thesis about the difficulties of being promoted out of your class.

A really interesting, and very accessibly written, analysis of the problems you can face if you are promoted to commissioned officer rank but not of the same class as most of the people you are suddenly sharing a wardroom with.

Tumblr Special: why did the ROs decide to become commissioned officers?

Ferhan Ahmet: It genuinely never occurred to Ferhan to do anything else. I describe them in chapter one as ‘the unconscious monarch of all they survey’, and that pretty much sums it up. Their perfect self-assurance and flawless seamanship mean that since they first went to sea at 11, people have always followed their lead. Having never had their authority questioned, they have never had reason to question it themself. To Ferhan, largely unconscious of their ridiculous personal charisma, it seems like this is simply how the universe works.

Celyn Davies: Oh, actually this one is a secret! Sorry. When you meet Celyn, you might ask yourself why someone like them would ever choose the command track rather than just staying as a bard and happily investigating the natural world. And you would be right to ask that!

Ellis Evans: As regular readers will know, Ellis was motivated purely by duty. Or perhaps love would be a better word. Their parents assumed they would pass for lieutenant, and Ellis is kind to a fault. They would never have disappointed their parents by failing to do what was expected. But, being stuck in a leadership role they didn’t want, they have worked very hard to be good at it. Nothing has ever come easily to Ellis, but that just means they are excellent at conscientiously plugging away at something until they can do it.

***

Right now, the project for which I am doing most of my wheat googling is a choose your own adventure IF game I’ve been commissioned to write for Choice of Games. You can find out all about it, and play the 60K word demo, here.

Want to sign up for this newsletter? You can do that here. You can find the RSS feed here.

[unheardoracle]

Your dialogue is stiff because everyone is being too honest

Great dialogue can come from radical emotional honesty. But in most real conversations, people

dodge questions

answer indirectly

lie (badly)

change the subject

crack jokes to avoid serious answers

lie (convincingly)

say half of what they mean

tell the truth but get so anxious/angry/defensive others now think they're lying

If your dialogue feels unnatural, it might be because everyone is saying exactly what they think, or articulating their thoughts too well. Try letting characters hide things instead.

Subtext is where tension lives.

[hpowellsmith]

Question about pre-existing romances in IF

If you like romancing characters where there's already some kind of romantic feeling there in IF, what do you enjoy most about them? If they feel more special compared to romances that start onscreen, what gives them that spark for you?

And more specifically:

-do you like being in the pre-existing romance at the start of the game, or do you prefer being exes with an optional chance to get back together during the game?

-do flashback sequences feel necessary to make this romance structure feel real and fun to you?

-Bonus question: if you prefer your MC's romance to start onscreen and in the MC's present, what do you prefer about that / dislike about a pre-existing romance?

-Related adjacent bonus question 2: how do you feel about a prior non-romantic connection, ie the NPC being a friend, rival etc before the start of the game and romance beginning onscreen? Does that feel noticeably more (or less) exciting than meeting the character at the first time as your PC does?

[if-seal]

Dear IF Seal,

Holds up a salmon and a trout. Which do you like better? Actually, you know what? You can have both! 🐟🐟

So I'm dealing with something weird and could use some advice. I posted about my IF WIP project early on in the dev process and people have been so nice and receptive to it. Really engaging with the premise and the characters and the demo. And I'm really super grateful!

But here's the weird thing: all this positive attention is kind of messing with my head? Maybe almost as much as negative attention would. Definitely much more than no attention at all.

As a seal, you probably spend quite a bit of time on beaches, so you might appreciate this analogy.

It's like I went from messing around in my own sandbox to suddenly realizing there's actually an audience watching me build a sandcastle, thinking about the sandcastle, asking questions about the sandcastle, waiting for the next addition to the sandcastle.

And now I'm second-guessing whether it's going to be tall enough, have enough towers, if the moat I planned for should actually be a rampart, if it'll even meet the basic requirements for being called a "castle", maybe it won't turn out to be exactly the sandcastle everyone is expecting, maybe it'll be more like a sand-igloo after all… or worse, maybe I'm actually just making quicksand and everyone's about to slowly sink into disappointment. 😱 Then I worry all this worrying is stalling construction completely. 😮‍💨😵‍💫

The blank page just looks really different when you know other people are waiting for you to fill it.

How do you handle this? Developing a story in public? How do you keep that experimental, "let's see where this goes" energy when you've got people already invested in their own idea of what your story is and who your characters are?

And maybe the larger question is: when is the right time to start sharing an IF project?

The bigger part of me wishes I'd waited until the first draft was completely finished, but then you miss out on some great feedback that can tell you if you're on the right track, make you think about details you hadn't considered before and let you nerd out on some obscure part of the worldbuilding that'll probably never make it into the story itself. But sharing early also seems to come with its own creative costs. 🤷

TLDR: I'm just finding myself creatively paralyzed by the very encouragement that should, by all logic, be fueling me.

Anyway, I'd really appreciate any thoughts you might have on this! Sorry for the rant and sorry if this has been asked before (I can't be the only one to ever have experienced this, can I??)

Take care! Lots of love and much respect!

Dear Sandcastle-Building Friend,

O how lovely to be offered not one but two fish! Don't mind if I do!

And thank you also for your lovely letter. I know from my mailbox that there are plenty who would love to be in your position, and I hope that you sharing this shows that the sea is not always gentler on the other side, and there is potential insecurity whether one has a lot of attention, or little, or does not share their work at all.

Then I worry all this worrying is stalling construction completely. 😮‍💨😵‍💫

I think this is the key to it. It is of course hard not to think about the reception that your writing may or may not have in the future. And at the same time it is useful to think about the audience you are aiming for.

But try to focus on your ideal audience, the players who have got excited about your work and are there for the ride. Yes some people may slip off as they realise the game isn't exactly what they're after, and that is natural, but as you continue to write, the ones who do love it for what it is will stick with you.

Sometimes players construct a game in their mind that doesn't match yours, and get disappointed when they realise it doesn't match. Perhaps once you've completed your draft, you can return to this feedback and see whether you agree, and whether you might like to signpost the early game differently.

BUT.

Right now, players making up their own hypothetical game, or their potential disappointment, is their business. It is not really something you need to think about right now. Your business is to dig back to your roots, about the concept that got you excited about sharing in the first place.

And maybe the larger question is: when is the right time to start sharing an IF project?

I know for certain that people think about this question a great deal. I would invite you to take a look at the IF Seal archive for more questions and answers on this one.

For this situation, though: personally I do enjoy sharing WIPs, and getting a sense of what is landing well with players and where I can improve things. It does make me nervous to share, but at the same time I would rather share something incomplete that is easier to edit than something I made in total isolation that might be harder to change.

But everyone is different, so perhaps next time around you might like to write a larger proportion of your game before you share it. Or for this WIP, it might be more comfortable to, for example, write Chapter 4 and 5 by yourself, then share Chapter 4 once you are on Chapter 6. (This would give an extra bonus of having more distance from the first draft of Chapter 4 once others are looking at it, so your vision may have more clarity.) If sharing early has bumped your confidence maybe taking some time writing offline will help.

Or perhaps you might like to write something in solitude, then share it down the line.

It is your job to think about what you love about your game, and what you want to build from it. You will make a brilliant castle! It will not be a castle that everyone will love, because that is impossible, but I am sure that some will. Build your castle, not what you think someone else wants. There will be plenty of people who think it will turn out to be one thing, then it is another, and they did not even realise that was what they wanted until it happened.

Best of luck with your writing, and congratulations on the excitement that players have about your work!

[ailelie]

The Lamplighters Guild: Update

Chapter 4a (~41k) has been added to the demo!

This addition covers a single, long day -- the anniversary of the MC's parents' deaths.

While this is part of chapter 4, 4a could easily stand alone as its own chapter.

Over the course of the day, the MC honors their parents, checks out a grave, talks with their estranged younger brother, and deals with being the leader of a guild. The penultimate scene is the memorial dinner, which the MC can share with one of the romantic options.

Each RO route is different, sharing only sharing the overall architecture and what the MC chooses to share.

I'm really pleased with this addition, and I hope y'all like it, too.

The next big addition probably won't come until this winter. I will release the rest of chapter 4 all at once, which I won't do until I've gotten a good chunk of chapter 5 written.

As a reminder....

The Lamplighters Guild is an interactive fiction story in which you work to solve the mystery of your parents' murder while also running the least-loved guild in the city and fighting monsters that only those who have been hurt by them can perceive.

Your romantic options are:

Elian (same calling as MC), your long-time best friend who has been keeping secrets.

Nothia (she/her), your rival who carries more than her fair share of responsibility.

Ostric (he/him), your estranged brother's best friend who has crushed on you since before he knew what a crush was.

Kian (ne/nem), your friend who is now drowning in grief, guilt, and alcohol.

Luvia (she/her), an over-the-top partygirl and potential old flame who is far more than she seems.

and

Frey (he/him), the socially awkward city archivist who kicked the whole story off by leaving a copied guard report on your front step.

[if-seal]

Dear IF Seal,

Holds up a salmon and a trout. Which do you like better? Actually, you know what? You can have both! 🐟🐟

So I'm dealing with something weird and could use some advice. I posted about my IF WIP project early on in the dev process and people have been so nice and receptive to it. Really engaging with the premise and the characters and the demo. And I'm really super grateful!

But here's the weird thing: all this positive attention is kind of messing with my head? Maybe almost as much as negative attention would. Definitely much more than no attention at all.

As a seal, you probably spend quite a bit of time on beaches, so you might appreciate this analogy.

It's like I went from messing around in my own sandbox to suddenly realizing there's actually an audience watching me build a sandcastle, thinking about the sandcastle, asking questions about the sandcastle, waiting for the next addition to the sandcastle.

And now I'm second-guessing whether it's going to be tall enough, have enough towers, if the moat I planned for should actually be a rampart, if it'll even meet the basic requirements for being called a "castle", maybe it won't turn out to be exactly the sandcastle everyone is expecting, maybe it'll be more like a sand-igloo after all… or worse, maybe I'm actually just making quicksand and everyone's about to slowly sink into disappointment. 😱 Then I worry all this worrying is stalling construction completely. 😮‍💨😵‍💫

The blank page just looks really different when you know other people are waiting for you to fill it.

How do you handle this? Developing a story in public? How do you keep that experimental, "let's see where this goes" energy when you've got people already invested in their own idea of what your story is and who your characters are?

And maybe the larger question is: when is the right time to start sharing an IF project?

The bigger part of me wishes I'd waited until the first draft was completely finished, but then you miss out on some great feedback that can tell you if you're on the right track, make you think about details you hadn't considered before and let you nerd out on some obscure part of the worldbuilding that'll probably never make it into the story itself. But sharing early also seems to come with its own creative costs. 🤷

TLDR: I'm just finding myself creatively paralyzed by the very encouragement that should, by all logic, be fueling me.

Anyway, I'd really appreciate any thoughts you might have on this! Sorry for the rant and sorry if this has been asked before (I can't be the only one to ever have experienced this, can I??)

Take care! Lots of love and much respect!

Dear Sandcastle-Building Friend,

O how lovely to be offered not one but two fish! Don't mind if I do!

And thank you also for your lovely letter. I know from my mailbox that there are plenty who would love to be in your position, and I hope that you sharing this shows that the sea is not always gentler on the other side, and there is potential insecurity whether one has a lot of attention, or little, or does not share their work at all.

Then I worry all this worrying is stalling construction completely. 😮‍💨😵‍💫

I think this is the key to it. It is of course hard not to think about the reception that your writing may or may not have in the future. And at the same time it is useful to think about the audience you are aiming for.

But try to focus on your ideal audience, the players who have got excited about your work and are there for the ride. Yes some people may slip off as they realise the game isn't exactly what they're after, and that is natural, but as you continue to write, the ones who do love it for what it is will stick with you.

Sometimes players construct a game in their mind that doesn't match yours, and get disappointed when they realise it doesn't match. Perhaps once you've completed your draft, you can return to this feedback and see whether you agree, and whether you might like to signpost the early game differently.

BUT.

Right now, players making up their own hypothetical game, or their potential disappointment, is their business. It is not really something you need to think about right now. Your business is to dig back to your roots, about the concept that got you excited about sharing in the first place.

And maybe the larger question is: when is the right time to start sharing an IF project?

I know for certain that people think about this question a great deal. I would invite you to take a look at the IF Seal archive for more questions and answers on this one.

For this situation, though: personally I do enjoy sharing WIPs, and getting a sense of what is landing well with players and where I can improve things. It does make me nervous to share, but at the same time I would rather share something incomplete that is easier to edit than something I made in total isolation that might be harder to change.

But everyone is different, so perhaps next time around you might like to write a larger proportion of your game before you share it. Or for this WIP, it might be more comfortable to, for example, write Chapter 4 and 5 by yourself, then share Chapter 4 once you are on Chapter 6. (This would give an extra bonus of having more distance from the first draft of Chapter 4 once others are looking at it, so your vision may have more clarity.) If sharing early has bumped your confidence maybe taking some time writing offline will help.

Or perhaps you might like to write something in solitude, then share it down the line.

It is your job to think about what you love about your game, and what you want to build from it. You will make a brilliant castle! It will not be a castle that everyone will love, because that is impossible, but I am sure that some will. Build your castle, not what you think someone else wants. There will be plenty of people who think it will turn out to be one thing, then it is another, and they did not even realise that was what they wanted until it happened.

Best of luck with your writing, and congratulations on the excitement that players have about your work!

[choiceofgames]

Free expansion for “Spire, Surge, and Sea!”

Unlock the secrets of Gigantea! Today, we are thrilled to release a major, free expansion to Spire, Surge, and Sea, the Nebula Award Finalist post-apocalyptic science fantasy novel by Stewart C. Baker.

Today’s update to Spire, Surge, and Sea is available at no additional charge. To celebrate, both of Stewart’s Nebula Finalist games are on sale for 40% off until July 30!

Spire, Surge, and Sea (40% off): The King lies. The gods live. In humanity’s last city, floating in a worldwide seascape, will you tear it all down to protect your own memories?

The Bread Must Rise (40% off): In this magical baking contest, you’ll team up with the Queen Undying to bake your rivals into an early grave—or out of the grave, with necromancy!

Whether you are a returning voyager or braving the Worldsea for the very first time, there has never been a better time to play Spire, Surge, and Sea.

What’s New in the Free Update?

New Minigames in Chapter Five: Try your hand at one of four brand-new minigames to get closer to the game’s NPCs and discover what life is really like on Gigantea.

A Frozen Expedition in Chapter Six: Set sail to a mysterious island in the far, frozen reaches of the Worldsea. Uncover tantalizing clues about the King’s former life and secure critical help for your final confrontation.

In-Game Hint System: Worried about making a wrong move at a crucial moment? Toggle the new hint system to see exactly which stat is tested in each choice—or take out the guesswork entirely and view the exact score you need to succeed.

More Immersive Roleplay: We’ve expanded action and choice outcomes throughout the entire book for a more reactive, deeply personal player experience.