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? I’m so confused, played the loop 5 times so far
Edit - Nvm played again and finally got the hints ;-;
Okay I’ve been racking my brain trying to save that damn egg to no avail. Anyone know how?
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I’ve done the prologue loop a few times, and I still can’t ‘win’; any pointers?
Updated the prologue to streamline things a bit.
I’ve 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 it’ll 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 don’t get fully sucked into the writing, thank you very much.)
Some preliminary thoughts:
Tonally, it’s contemplative and yet fast paced and trimmed of all fat. I don’t know if it’s 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 it’s sooo fun! Like watching a horror movie or eating very spicy food. I don’t 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 doesn’t reset. Pffft. (Although I’m guessing that’s intentional, and if I had chosen to not take a break, I’d 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 hasn’t discovered them yet, that doesn’t 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 ‘has picked’ or simply ‘picked’ 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:
“We have weakened,” he says, “gone 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.”
I think it should be ‘grown fat’ not ‘gone fat’? Or even ‘become fat’.
And now that’s all the despairing text I can read. I’m going back to play a game where I can be a bodyguard to a silly teenager at a boarding school, thank you very much. I’ll pick up the rest tomorrow.
But amazing start, Will! Absolutely gorgeous writing! 🩷
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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. It’s like ten times smaller than Earth.
Man all those country names are so bad. I’m not changing any of them.
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An excerpt of what I’ve 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 barracks’ sergeant by the arms and force him to listen.
“Last week, we had to fight a manticore!” says a dwarf soldier, his voice strained with frustration. “I’ve still got a barb in my ass! The skin has healed over the tip!”
“That’s what you signed up for!” protests the sergeant.
“We didn’t sign up to fight monsters!” says another soldier. “We’re peacekeepers! That’s what the Divine Right has told us!”
Another soldier pipes up. “Yeah! We should get paid extra if we have to fight all these different kinds of monsters!”
“A hydra! It has to be put to sleep and incinerated!”
“A basilisk! We have to carry blindfolds with us, stumbling around with sharp objects in the dark!”
“A griffon! Grabbed Carl by the shoulders and carried him off to the cliffs!”
“A harpy! I still hear her voice ringing in my ears – it never stops!”
“A doppelganger! I don’t even know who I am anymore!”
“A dragon! We just ran!”
“A giant spider! Fucking hate spiders!”
“A wizard! Wizards don’t play fair. All we’ve got are shields and spears!”
A resounding echo of “Yeah!” and “Spears!”
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Nice, can’t wait for more
Thank you for sharing that Will!
I always enjoy your writing.