hpowellsmith
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May Newsflash #1 - Chapter 10 is in the bag!
🕑 Added 2024-05-10 18:00:08 +0000 UTCI'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 - double hooray! And today I playtested Chapters 8-10 more times than I can count - triple hooray!
I've been listening to the Disco Elysium soundtrack a lot while writing this fortnight. Not because it makes me think of Honor Bound particularly, but it's a lovely album.
Sometimes I skip doing an in-depth playtest once I've finished a chapter (I did for Chapter 8), and I always regret it. You just can't get a real sense of how a game feels until you playtest: the flow and feel are so different to reading through on the page. Among other things, I found a bunch of bugs and transitions between scenes not reading smoothly, tweaked a whooole lot of wording and paragraph spacing, and added an extra scene to a Raffi storyline where one branch didn't feel satisfying enough when failing (I failed when playtesting. A lot).
The outline for the secret project has come back with feedback which isn't too hard to get done - I think that'll be sorted early next week. Then I need to plan and start coding Chapter 11! My goal is to get a decent headway on the code before the last week of May, in which things become busy again as it's a school holiday. Fingers crossed!
Current wordcount: 418667 words
Fortnight wordcount: 13358 words
Average playthrough wordcount: 84827 words
The playthrough length is not only a novel, now, but is also getting to be a chunky novel! It's a longer playthrough than Royal Affairs at this point, which is exciting...
Other business:
Royal Affairs now has the ability to save at the end! It's starting to feel more real as I get closer towards the end of Honor Bound... I hope it won't be too long before the official full beta test begins!
Honor Bound is also going to have a cheat and hint add-on, in the same way Creme de la Creme, Royal Affairs, and Blood Money do!
Thank you as ever for your support and feedback. I hope you have a lovely weekend!
Sneak peek:
This is from a little communal hangout scene from late in the game. I enjoy writing the characters just chilling out and shooting the breeze every so often, between the various dramas!
Comments
Hannah Powell-Smith
Thank you, I'll see about putting that in!
Hannah Powell-Smith
Yes, agreed! It's turned out to be so popular with the other games that I did it with that I'll probably ask about doing it with future games I make too. I'm really happy that it's been useful to people and it's very important to me that any DLC/extras feel worth it!
Bessie Burnet
A more middling dialogue option would be appreciated for my character. I think, as a training corps character who prides herself on being a fair teacher, I think a dialogue option that says a balance of being strict but not too much of a hard taskmaster would be good to include. Sometime you need to be firm, but sometimes being pushed too hard can be detrimental.
emelsi
Just a thought I've had for a while about your games, I think the cheat/hint DLC is a brilliant way to increase monetization. It's simple to modify Choicescript game states and saves but adding the convenience factor for a few dollars extra is genius. I think Spiderweb Software used to do the same thing; with how angry (and toxic) a lot of gamers can be about developers trying to turn a profit, AFAIK nobody gets mad about your addons. I'm thinking of it specifically because I know a small subset of people were (wrongly) upset about the 0-day DLC for the Hungry Names game (despite it being free if you bought early).
