hpowellsmith posts
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Blog Post: Writing Denario Vecoli
In the lead-up to the release of Honor Bound I'm sharing posts about some of the Honor Bound characters, my thoughts when I was starting to create them, and the writing process.Here's the one for Denario Vecoli a week before it goes public.I hope you enjoy!
Blog Post: Writing Fiore Roldan
In the lead-up to the release of Honor Bound I'm sharing posts about some of the Honor Bound characters, my thoughts when I was starting to create them, and the writing process.Here's the first one, a week before everyone else gets to see it. I hope you enjoy!
Blog post: Building Your Honor Bound Character
If you'd like to have a sneak peek at a blog post a couple of days before everyone else gets to see, please take a look! It's about how you can shape your Honor Bound character, in terms of personality, appearance, and skills, and my thoughts about the writing process for all of them.I hope ...
iOS and Billing
You may already have heard about the price increase on Patreon's iOS appand the switch to first-of-the-month payments only.Patreon recommends that I increase prices on the iOS app which I'm not going to do. Instead, I'm delaying the switch for the foreseeable future (Patreon says it'...
Honor Bound is with the copyeditor!
I’m delighted to let you know that I’ve sent the full draft of Honor Bound to my editor Abby!Beta testing started in mid-August and since then I’ve added around 50,000 words to the game. Some of this was expanding things throughout the game, and most of it was expanding the epilogue sequence t...
September update
Hello all, and happy September! At this stage of a project, things start getting a bit all over the place, and so I've been less disciplined about letting you know what's going on than I'd have liked - apologies for that, and I hope to keep on track better!I've spent the month so far...
Early access to Honor Bound mini prequel: Recruitment Day
Afternoon, everyone! I hope you're doing well. September is flying by for me, and I'll be putting up more of a detailed update about what I've been up to later today, but for now...Here's early access to a Honor Bound mini prequel game! It's called Recruitment Day, and in it the ...
A sort of fortnightly, almost-end-of-August progress report
I've been on holiday for the last couple of weeks and had a truly lovely time with family in the countryside. That two weeks coincided with the first fortnight of beta testing, for which you can see here the changes and fixes I've been making.So far I've been getting really thoughtful, h...
Honor Bound beta testing has begun!
Drumroll... it's that time... time for beta testing!For almost a week, I've been going through feedback from six randomised playthroughs from continuity readers, fixing many typos and sorting out little (and medium-sized) errors. And now the full game is ready for private testing!If you'...
No-longer-NaNo Draft Revision Progress Update
I guess it doesn't really count as NaNoWriMo if the month's finished, does it?Anyway, since the 26th July when I finished the Honor Bound draft, I've been doing some various edits in response to playtester feedback - some expansions and tweaks, and some fixes. I've also pretty much d...
Revision Push NaNo Newsflash #4
I'm absolutely delighted to let you know that I've finished the Honor Bound draft and sent it off!The next thing I need to do is finish off the cheats and hints, then sort through any editorial notes that come in, and then beta testing.The public Chapter 1-7 demo is still upuntil the beta te...
Revision Push NaNo Newsflash #3
This week was brilliant because I finished the first Honor Bound draft,and also challenging because everyone in my household except me had various stomach bugs. So it was a tiring one for a number of reasons.I've done a bunch of playtesting, and my wife played through the whole game which was im...
Good news for Honor Bound!
Well... my initial first Honor Bound draft is done!That's 525000 words that I've written for Honor Bound in 15 months.The work isn't over yet though by any means.Tomorrow I'm going to start playtesting... a lot. I've already playtested the first two-thirds fairly thoroughly, and ...
Last Chapter Push NaNo Newsflash #2
Chapter 12 is nearly done. It's nearly done!! This week I was mostly drafting that part of the game, though I also moved some things around - there's a scene I was going to have in the final chapter and then moved elsewhere because it worked better there.Right now I'm ahead of where I wa...
Last-Chapter Push NaNo Newsflash #1
I'm doing a little NaNoWriMo to keep my momentum, so I'm going to do these public posts weekly until I've finished my draft.I've been working on the Chapter 12 first draft, which I'd already coded. I'm pleased I did it that way - it's the first time I've done it - as ...
Mini June #2 Newsflash
Happy Pride, everyone!As you've probably gathered, I'm having a bit of a busy time of it but here is a very small, belated progress update...I've finished drafting Chapter 11! It's been a long haul and some of it has definitely had me reminding myself "perfection is the enemy of ...
A sneaky Honor Bound Chapters 4-7 update
Hello all, I hope you're having a good week! I have been deep in a combination of busy writing, a heatwave, and some unpleasantly dramatic insomnia, so didn't end up doing a news update last Friday - but I have been doing a lot of edits on Chapters 4-7, and thought I'd share it here befo...
June Newsflash #1
It's been a funny, busy couple of weeks. I'm sorry for the lateness of this progress update - the end of last week was a bit hectic.I'm moving towards the finish line. Not sprinting, yet, because I was on holiday in Portugal for one of the weeks this fortnight, but I've coded Chapter...
Honor Bound Early Access: Chapter 7
I'm delighted to share Honor Bound Chapter 7! You can skip any number of chapters to start at the chapter of your choice, or you can play through the whole thing. You can try loading an old save, but you may need to start a fresh one.If you have a minute, I'd love to hear your feedback!As be...
May Newsflash #2
I can't believe it's just over a year since I announced Honor Bound!And we're getting towards the end!Sort of.In a roundabout kind of way.This fortnight I got my Chapter 10 notes back from my editor and did my revisions, some of which involved tweaking things so that [certain plot things...
May Newsflash #1 - Chapter 10 is in the bag!
I'm so pleased that this is the first newsflash in quite some time where I've not been saying something like "I've not done as much as I'd have liked..."I've had improvements in energy, focus, and back pain - hooray! Yesterday I finished drafting Chapter 10 of Honor Bound...
Honor Bound Chapter 7: alpha preview
Here's the readable Chapter 7 excerpt!A few notes about what the randomiser chose for this excerpt:The MC is called Specialist TanseI think the MC is romancing Korzha, or hinting at it, based on one of the interactions they have (the randomiser must have been feeling romantic!)Korzha is nonbinar...
Bonus Supplement Reminder
Happy April, everyone! Just a reminder that I won't be adding new stories to the Bonus Supplement archiveuntil further notice as I'm focusing my writing time on finishing the Honor Bound first draft.If you want to access the stories, I recommend making a one-off subscription and then downgra...
April Newsflash #3
I'm being a bit of a broken record on this at the moment, but April has been a lot! I'm getting back into my rhythm but the first week of this fortnight involved back pain that meant I couldn't write for most of the week, which was not great (for writing or for general comfort and happin...
April Side Story: Raffi Claudian, 1759
In this character study set two years before Honor Bound, Raffi encounters some new friends.Content note: alcoholPassword: amatothecatThe Bonus Supplement master list with the rest of the bonus stories is here!Important Note:On 30th April, I will put the Bonus Supplement tier on hiatus as I want to ...
April Newsflash #2
So! April continues to be quite a lot between life and medical stuff going on. I have been making more progress with writing Chapter 10, though, which I'm really pleased about. It's a lot of fun putting together these dramatic points, and also drawing out the climactic plot a bit more than i...
April Newsflash-ish #1
Hello! Just a little short post today, due to the last couple of weeks having been a lot. I'm sorry I missed Friday's usual news slot - a variety of life things ran away with me a bit.I finished drafting Chapter 9 and started on Chapter 10 this fortnight! I haven't done as much writing a...
Honor Bound Early Access: Chapter 6
Here's Honor Bound Chapter 6! As before, you can skip any number of the earlier chapters to start with the chapter you'd like. You can play it over here.If you have the time and energy, it's always great to hear what you think! There has some feedback (mostly to do with engaging with/thi...
March Side Story: Florin Kraemer, 1757 - Westerlin-Zaledo War AU
Florin welcomes a newcomer to the trench.Florin never used to be this sentimental, but people change.Content note: trench warfare, references to death; just everyone having a bad timePassword: amatothecatThe Bonus Supplement master list with the rest of the bonus stories is here!
March Newsflash #2
Last fortnight involved a stupendous amount of writing in the second week, and this fortnight has been... less so thanks to some medical stuff and general disruption of my usual routines. (Still, I managed to go to a city I've never visited before for a boring admin reason which happened to also...
