Patreon Devlog 22/05/2022

22/05/2022

This Week's Summary:

• Dealt with chaos
• edited/worked on Quill's route

The Ramble:

So as I'm sure you all realise, I released Gilded Shadows a little over a week ago.

Things have been quite chaotic since then though it is quieting down a little now.

I spent most of this week, frankly, answering questions and tumblr asks and responding to comments. And just talking to people about the game on the Steamberry server and reddit and other servers.

So for those wondering how the release went - it's been really great so far. Feedback has been largely positive and the game's first week was about 3 times more successful than Changeling's. So that part has been great!

There's just always a lot of social media type stuff to manage.

When I've had the time and focus, I've been working on Quill's route.

I believe I mentioned that I was going back through to edit and refresh myself on the first chapters I've written because I wrote them over such a long period of time - and while doing other things - that I'd lost track of the narrative a little.

I caught back up to where I was (chapter six) and have been doing a bit of a re-write. In chapter five I introduce two side characters (Neel and Aritz) who are pretty minor characters but who I think I may want to use during the story's climax. So I decided to expand their roles slightly and bring them into a conversation happening in chapter six.

This is the part of the route where I bring together some of the bits and pieces I've set up in earlier chapters to solidify the route conflict. I also want to more firmly lay the foundation for Quill and Morgan's romance.

I've been hinting at how comfortable they are with each other and the fact that Quill has already become quite observant about her habits (enough he can tell instantly over the "phone" that she's upset about something). But I want to take the opportunity in this chapter to lay out the fact that, to him, she has shifted from 'stranger' to 'friend' and...that he is not opposed to a shift into 'maybe more.'

I already have a plan for how I want their relationship beginning and first kiss to go so I've been working to set up the foundation for that in these chapters.

With all the feedback from the initial release under my belt, I realise that Yuu is the unreleased character who has garnered the most interest - but I believe that's largely because he appears more often than the others. Quill doesn't appear at all except in his route preview scene. And Reuben does appear - but infrequently. Yuu, on the other hand, appears for multiple interactions across several routes.

I feel a little bad that I'm planning to write his route last (though I could attempt his second) but I'm still feeling like Quill is the logical choice for the first expansion.

His route explores a totally new part of the setting (where Yuu is another Endgame route - albeit, it would be from a new perspective). And it introduces a group of characters we've never met before.

Given that much of the game (except Lance's route) deals primarily with the same cast and same Endgame/Crimson dynamic, I think it will be nice to do another route that is less focused on that *first*.

ANYWAY. That's enough rambling.

Quill's route is around 60,000 words right now (more than half the target word count) but I'm only in Chapter Six. So it looks like, unless I have some short chapters coming up, this may be another long route that I need to focus on trimming down during edits.

I think that's largely due to the amount of new lore I have to introduce in early chapters. I'm a little nervous about it LoL. But we'll see how it turns out.

Sneak Peeks:

No sneak peeks yet, since this is all writing focused for now!

But as a side note - when working on the rest of the game, I did this kiss CG that I ended up not using in any of the routes. And I think I eventually turned it into a Quill kiss. ...

But I'm not sure I'll be able to use it. Maybe I will try to find it (somewhere on my hard drive!) and show it off at some point. LoL

Upcoming Week:

Now that things have quieted down from release, I should be able to focus better on writing. I want to get Chapter six squared away and start on Chapter seven.

Chapter Seven is a largely character driven chapter, so it might be on the shorter side. It's a chapter that focuses a bit on Rory (who shows up in this route too) and his backstory as well as Quill and Morgan discussing what all these revelations about...STUFF...mean for her.

And them.

I'll see you all next week and hope I can start getting back into my usual developer updates now that we're past the big RELEASE hump.