hpowellsmith

Newsflash: March #1

Added 2025-03-07 19:30:02 +0000 UTC

A lot of planning, outlining and coding this fortnight for The Earth Has Teeth, with a hefty side order of revising. I drafted Chapter 3 - but it turned out it isn't actually completed, more of that in a minute. I've outlined and coded Chapter 4, and am pretty confident about it: lots of drama and tough choices for the PC in this one.

Here's a track from my writing playlist to get you in the mood: The Reckoning by UNSECRET. You'll recognise this if, like me, you've watched How To Get Away With Murder or Killjoys.

Writing Progress

After the gigantic wordcount last fortnight I was raring to go with Chapter 4! The coding has gone great, but I hit some problems when playtesting Chapter 3; today, after trying to rework a scene, I realised that I needed to cut it altogether as it just didn't feel right.

It's not a disaster - I'd actually departed from the outline in writing it in the first place, thinking it would be fun to include - but it's never fun to cut 7000 words of hard work.

The good thing is that I can use almost all of that writing later in the game - so it'll still be there, just in a couple of chapters' time.

Excerpt

The sun is bright and warm over Ven Lake, sparkling on the ripples made by the gentle breeze. It's not as huge a body of water as Lake Hasri, but it's still hard to see to the other side. A little jetty sits a short distance away, with rowboats moored to it and bobbing on the water.
Issi leads you and Nikita along the water's edge to a garden bordered with thick hedging that's taller than you and impossible to see through. Following the hedge leads you to a thatched cottage whose front garden is filled with bright summer flowers: scarlet wild peonies, white and pink poppies, and a thicket of purple lavender whose scent billows up as you brush past.

Wordcount

Total The Earth Has Teeth wordcount: 100323 words
Average The Earth Has Teeth playthrough: 31793 words (this is very nearly as long as it takes to play Noblesse Oblige!)
Fortnight progress: 17725 words

When I look at it like that, it really is a lot of progress, so I'll try to focus on that rather than on the things that are tricky. It's still been a downer having to cut so much, though.

Next writing

I'll finish sorting out the Chapter 3 scene and do any Chapter 1-2 revisions that are needed in response to player feedback. Then I'll be writing Chapter 4 - let's see how far I get through it over the next two weeks.

Recap

The Fiore/MC/Savarel bonus story went up, as did the Nikita intro and the March Q&A post.

The biggest thing was the first two chapters of The Earth Has Teeth! I'm tremendously excited to have been able to share them.

Today, I updated those early access chapters with an increase of 1000 words and a number of tweaks and improvements. The chapters are now 51.5K words! There are a lot of minor clarifications and tweaks, expanded details, and added options, as well as making all the skill tests significantly less harsh (there's plenty of time to get harsher later on but my intention isn't to make it feel like banging your head against a wall at the beginning). I think you'll need to restart your game for it to behave correctly.

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