Ive noticed while playing the game in the second pass when magnus is talking with us in the cemetery after his fathers death. It still has the text of essme and screaming children even though he married his male tutor so thats a bug lol. Will continue along to see if anything else jumps out at me.
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Right? Iām so confused, played the loop 5 times so far
Edit - Nvm played again and finally got the hints ;-;
Okay Iāve been racking my brain trying to save that damn egg to no avail. Anyone know how?
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Iāve done the prologue loop a few times, and I still canāt āwinā; any pointers?
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Updated the prologue to streamline things a bit.
Iāve also now changed it so that the demon figures out the answers on their own (i.e. the game will tell you what the right answers are) after 3 loops rather than after 4 loops.
@Lucky_Icarus at the moment the only options are give the egg away or have it be destroyed in the fight. I might consider a third option where you keep the egg and also save it but itāll require a lot of extra content and work, so low priority while I work on Chapter II.
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Omg I am not in the right frame of mind to be able to attempt to read one of your stories, but will I let that stop me? Absolutely not. (But I will play upbeat Bollywood music in the background so I donāt get fully sucked into the writing, thank you very much.)
Some preliminary thoughts:
Tonally, itās contemplative and yet fast paced and trimmed of all fat. I donāt know if itās my mental illness or your writing (or a combination of the two) but it always leaves me a little more full of despair than I was before I read it, but itās sooo fun! Like watching a horror movie or eating very spicy food. I donāt understand how you do it, but you do it very well!
My favourite line in the initial bits: the truth does not require belief.
Thank you so much for giving us hints on the right options to pick. I was picking all the correct ones except for demanding that he save the girl, and I was growing so tired because the timeline kept resetting. And then I take one measly break, and the timeline doesnāt reset. Pffft. (Although Iām guessing thatās intentional, and if I had chosen to not take a break, Iād have been forced to repeat the cycle again and again until I took the break?)
And dammit, this line is sooo evocative: I grin until my smile cuts through my ears. And why would I do that?
Soooo creepy and unsettling!
I also love the various beings that can serve as our mouthpieces in the game. Although I was not expecting to see mentions of bacteria in such an old timey setting, it was delightful to see! Because, of course, even if science hasnāt discovered them yet, that doesnāt mean they do not exist and are not alive, and someone who knows and can inhabit every creature on the earth would know about them, too!
And wait, that whole thing was just the prologue? Love it! A+!
I think I noticed a typo or grammatical mistakes in a couple of places, but I am not 100% sure. The first one is in the very first few pages of the prologue.
He had picked up the general structure of the prayers from his parents but, at only five years old, is not so great with the details.
Since the rest of this part is in present tense, I think it should be āhas pickedā or simply āpickedā instead? Idk I learnt the language through reading, not a formal education, so I might be very wrong.
The next one is towards the end of the prologue:
āWe have weakened,ā he says, āgone fat off the kindness of the gods, forgotten what it is like to rely on our own talents to survive. In the afterlife, the gods will need strong fighters in the wars against the demons. Strengthen your mind and harden your will, and you will be rewarded. This is what the Divine Right promises. All of the gods, gathered together under one banner. There have been talks for years of making this change, and together we will bring it about, starting tonight.ā
I think it should be āgrown fatā not āgone fatā? Or even ābecome fatā.
And now thatās all the despairing text I can read. Iām going back to play a game where I can be a bodyguard to a silly teenager at a boarding school, thank you very much. Iāll pick up the rest tomorrow.
But amazing start, Will! Absolutely gorgeous writing! š©·
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Two maps, six years apart.
When I posted the original map (which was removed from the game in the end), nobody clocked that it was a giant circle!
Circadia is a giant lumpy circle.
Not that giant. Itās like ten times smaller than Earth.
Man all those country names are so bad. Iām not changing any of them.
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An excerpt of what Iāve been working on:
I am a relief carved into a shield, the toad-like face of Violah. Her worst features are accentuated: her scowl, her beady eyes, her crooked teeth, her tongue. The shield tells an enemy: I have devoted myself to the craft of killing, and you have been placed on my workshop bench.
One hundred of these shields are hung on the walls of the barracks, ready for any soldier to take. The soldiers gather here, their weapons down but their voices angry. The two largest of them, a half-orc and a muscular human, hold the barracksā sergeant by the arms and force him to listen.
āLast week, we had to fight a manticore!ā says a dwarf soldier, his voice strained with frustration. āIāve still got a barb in my ass! The skin has healed over the tip!ā
āThatās what you signed up for!ā protests the sergeant.
āWe didnāt sign up to fight monsters!ā says another soldier. āWeāre peacekeepers! Thatās what the Divine Right has told us!ā
Another soldier pipes up. āYeah! We should get paid extra if we have to fight all these different kinds of monsters!ā
āA hydra! It has to be put to sleep and incinerated!ā
āA basilisk! We have to carry blindfolds with us, stumbling around with sharp objects in the dark!ā
āA griffon! Grabbed Carl by the shoulders and carried him off to the cliffs!ā
āA harpy! I still hear her voice ringing in my ears ā it never stops!ā
āA doppelganger! I donāt even know who I am anymore!ā
āA dragon! We just ran!ā
āA giant spider! Fucking hate spiders!ā
āA wizard! Wizards donāt play fair. All weāve got are shields and spears!ā
A resounding echo of āYeah!ā and āSpears!ā
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Nice, canāt wait for more
Thank you for sharing that Will!
I always enjoy your writing.
I love Dandy so much you did a great job giving her life in this story
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Your father is a stoic woman, utterly implacable. She grinds her teeth and then takes the axe from you. āFine. A break. Drink water from the creek, and return in one hour. Eat your fill of what we have in the cupboard. Then you will continue.ā
Hours later, when youāve finally, agonisingly finished your work, you understand that although it seemed like a kindness, there was a lesson in what she has instructed you to do, as always: you can leave something for later, but it still must be done anyway, and youāll wish you finished it earlier. Better to finish it while youāre still in a rhythm.
I found a mistake (Your father is a stoic woman)
Sorry I donāt know how to send pictures here.
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Iām unable to progress after managing to leave Peridot. This error message appears right after succeeding a test:
ā03_execution line 1511: Non-existent variable āchoice_achieved_peridotāā
It seems to be a Opera only problem since Iāve tried on Chrome and it didnāt show up. Not sure if this is something fixable, but here it is anyways.
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This game has been haunting my mind incessantly since I read it way back when it was first released. I absolutely love the mechanics of the character-building system, and the characters and world-building remain intensely original and compelling. I just love everything about it.
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Thanks! Itās on cogdemos already.
Progress report: Slow going as Iāve had a tonne of life events and other projects over the past few months! There will be an update eventually.
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