Crème de la Crème Discussion and Romance Guide (Spoilers Within)

Well… i actually meant that was a mistake , as if something that she shouldn’t perform… an action that happen due to misjudgement :slight_smile:

It was her mistake… so Blaise could learn from her mistake, don’t do the same thing again next time… that’s should be the sole purpose of a punishment right ? :wink:

I doubt Blaise will get into any decent school.

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Well, we’ll see won’t we?

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Weekly update: January, Week 1

Week’s Wordcount: 3116 words
Total Wordcount: 201K words

Can you believe that’s 200,000 words cracked? I’m really pleased with how it’s all going!

What I’ve been doing:

-Resting up and other work: the last couple of weeks have been lighter on Creme de la Creme work; I had a bit of travel-recuperation to do, and some non-CoG deadlines to crack on with. I mention this because I think it’s good to be honest about when you need to slow down - it’s easy to only focus on giant wordcounts and major progress!

Having said that, I have indeed been making decent progress, with:

-Writing Chapter 7: Making my way steadily through the chapter, opening up some collegiate intrigue and introducing a new character from outside the school. There’s also the possibility of nursing someone’s bruised eye while they try not to have feelings about it, which is the kind of scene I’m always up for.

-Starting on the Delacroix teaser: I’ve sketched it out, and have started on the writing of it. It’s from Delacroix’s POV and it’s fun going for a very different style - from the main game and from the Blaise teaser.

All going well, I hope to report Chapter 7 being completed within two or three updates!

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I legit forgot what this game was, but based on the title, I thought “ooh, cooking!”

I do remember it now, though, and am glad it’s still going.

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Weekly update: January, Week 3

Week’s Wordcount: 10492 words
Total Wordcount: 212K words

This project is officially outrageously long y’all. It’s now 70K bigger than Blood Money was at the same stage, and is only growing from now…

What I’ve been doing:

-Finishing Chapter 7: with what feel like a million friendship and smooching scenes. Well, all right, six of each. Making them all suitably entertaining and different from each other is a big challenge, but a fun one. I also, bizarrely, made myself nostalgic for sitting English exams?? I’m sure the feeling will pass very soon.

-Planning Chapter 8: in which an inter-college competition event occurs, complete with dressage, sabotage, and … fencing (I couldn’t think of another word ending in “age”…). Here we also see the end of the spring term, and the spring holidays. There will be some manner of springtime celebration as part of the whole thing!

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I absolutely loved blood money I never realised it was you! It was a great story and I liked the politics behind it- from what I gathered from the demo was that you don’t have to be a status quo elite and can go against the social norms, have I read it wrong or is that actually the case?

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Thank you! I really enjoyed making Blood Money and I’m so glad you liked it! :blush:

In Crème de la Crème, yes you can go against the elitist society norms if you like - by doing something scandalous (eg romancing someone unsuitable), going for a career or academia rather than being a socialite, rejecting the idea of marrying someone for social prestige - or just ignoring your grades and schoolwork. There are various options!

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I loved that idea!- in the demo I always went for high physical stats as when you think of an elite you tend to think of someone having huge amounts of charisma mainly and intelligence- your doing great keep it up!!

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Weekly update: January, Week 4

Week’s Wordcount: 8166 words
Total Wordcount: 216K words

The eagle-eyed among you may note that although my week’s wordcount is 8000, the total wordcount is only 4000 higher than last week. Well, mathematical friends, the total new content is 8000 words, but I cut 4000 by removing testing-related code that’s no longer necessary at this stage. It felt very cleansing. And also makes my playthrough to total wordcount ratio a little less ridiculously branched. (It’s still ridiculously branched. But the replayability and different experiences for different players should make it all worth it!)

What I’ve been doing:

-Doing a little bit of writing for the Delacroix teaser. It’s ending up pretty melancholy, which I suppose suits such a gothy, solitary character. (Now I’m wondering how the Four Humours map onto the various characters, send help.)

-Coding achievements throughout - I’d been sitting on a list of ideas for achievements and thought I’d get some of them out of the way now rather than going through the whole game at the end.

-Coding and outlining Chapter 8: complete with a bunch of fiddly but functional code about sports day scores and exam grades.

-Re-outlining a chunk of Chapter 8: I outlined and coded a subplot at the end of Chapter 8 in full, but realised it wasn’t strong enough; it was sort of related to the overall plot but didn’t move it along enough. I wanted it to be more explicitly tied to the overall plot, and so I redid it. Now it’s much better! I include this here because I like acknowledging that writing isn’t always a straightforwardly linear process. Just like the games themselves!

-Writing Chapter 8: I’ve done one of three branches of the first act of the chapter, which I’m pleased with; it involves an extremely obnoxious character who’s one of my favourites. There is some content with Mr Griffith, which should humanise him a bit - he is so very severe and rarely opens up to anyone but you’ll see a bit of a more relaxed side of him here. It also involves a sports contest, which is bringing back dreadful flashbacks to my own schooldays. Happily, my own experiences involved less archery and mandatory participation, and more sitting around in the sun while the more sporty people did their thing…

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Glad to hear things are still going well. I do love the idea of you keeping us updated week by week, if nothing else it keeps you on target if you have to answer to a weekly update… probably should do the same, heh! :sweat_smile:

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Thank you, glad it’s fun to read! I find it nice to recap for myself as well as sharing progress - I have a spreadsheet recording wordcounts and general content, but it’s nice to get to the end of the week, write it out, and go “ooh actually I did more than I thought!” It also (sometimes) gives me info about whether I’ve got bogged down in something and I can think about whether I need to change my tactics…

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Weekly update: February, Week 1

Week’s Wordcount: 6979 words
Total Wordcount: 223K words

Welcome to February, and here is the Delacroix teaser, Hearthlight Eve! It’s about 1800 words long, and contains bad parenting and sadness. And some mild spoilers for the full game.

This was a fun opportunity to revisit what @FayI refers to as “Hannah’s sad short games” - brief character-focused interactive fiction which, yes, is often sad. This one is sad families rather than sad romance. I enjoy writing this sort of thing a lot - it was my first non-mod game writing - though don’t get much time to do them these days, so it was nice to have an reason to. (If you like my style and haven’t played my other games, there are a few on my itch page and my portfolio. Do take a look!)

What I’ve been doing:

-Making Hearthlight Eve, of course!

-Writing Chapter 8, which is going very nicely. In terms of playthrough length, I’m about a third to halfway through it, I think? In terms of writing amount, I’m at 16K words for the chapter, though, and am hoping to keep it under 30K. We shall see!

Out of interest, here’s a wordcount comparison between this and Blood Money:

Graph beneath the cut

So it’s…yeah, looking very much like it’ll end up with more text. I’m very interested to see how the playthrough length compares; at the moment, it’s looking around the same as the totality of Blood Money - but of course there are more chapters to go…

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The teaser doesn’t seem to work?

What’s it doing at your end, does the link to the itch page itself work for you?

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https://gyazo.com/3478773852937051d7b283ff4954201b it gives me this error.

I’ve had a quick look and it may be that the version of Twine plus the script is having an issue with the browser. Chrome on my Android phone is working OK, as is Firefox - what browser are you using? In my timezone it’s nearly my bedtime but I’ll have a look in more detail in the morning. Thank you for flagging it up!

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I’m using chrome, though I’m also using a night mode version of it. Maybe it’s that? Either that or Adblock, though if its not that then I really don’t know what it could possibly be. :man_shrugging:

EDIT: I looked at it on my phone, get the same error.

I did have an issue with the second link on my iPhone but it seems fine on my mums iPad so… :face_with_raised_eyebrow:

Awww…that game was cute and sad. :sob: Poor Delacroix. :cry:

Of course I still hope we’ll get a teasing peak into Max’s life outside of Gallatin too sometime. :persevere:

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