It occurs to one: are we sure Blackthorn is dead? Have we seen the corpse? Have we poked it? Because it also occurs to one that one might be dealing with a 13 Ghosts (remake) situation. I don’t even like the NORMAL zodiac, let alone the Black one.
There seems to be an issue even after the most recent update where if you choose both a custom first and last name, the last name will overwrite the first name and the last name will be set as “determined”
@FlipaCoin I think it should be okay now. Do tell me if it’s not. There was still a small issue in the variables. Thanks for pointing it out!
Yes, looks like its fixed now! Thank you and glad i could help. Really enjoying the game so far
PROGRESS UPDATE | June 24, 2024
Hi guys! There is no update yet, but I figured I could at least tell you how things are going. I know I haven’t added anything new to the demo in over a week, and the reason for that is mostly real-life chaos. Things have been pretty hectic lately (nothing too bad), but I’m positive I’ll be back to my regular writing schedule starting today.
I’ve been working on Chapter 2, but the story hasn’t really moved too far: that’s why I can’t add anything today. I will update the demo once I feel like there’s at least something new for you to experience. It won’t take too long. Perhaps till the end of this week or after the weekend?
CONTENT UPDATE | July 6, 2024
The first portion of Chapter 2 is here, and here’s what it adds to the game.
- The update includes the first portion of Chapter 2, which is about 11.600 words, excluding code. It’s more like a setup for what will happen in the chapter.
- Some highlights: first proper flirtatious moments for all the characters. Typically, you’ll have full freedom in choosing who you want to spend time with, but this time, the person who visits you will be the same person you chose to have a room next to. (It just makes sense in the context of the scene.)
- Some highlights: A cozy food moment.
- Some highlights: Introduction to background-related scenes that will come in the next patch.
- I also fixed more typos.
Yeeeeeaaaaah, just in time for my no-longer-subjected-to-shitty-internet day!
Note for everyone: start a new playthrough. Dash sent me back to the start of chapter 1, as expected, but it did NOT reset my stats to initial levels, so I was starting with like 15% sanity.
A couple of things
You got two "pouring"s here in close succession. It’s not a problem per se, but I thought I might note it anyway in case you preferred to replace one with a different verb:
Continuity hiccup: I roomed next to Julia, so we’ve already seen each other this morning. Therefore this bit here is off for people who have the same rooming arrangement.
Nope. Were you (haha) waffling between “scan the shelves” and “get to work” and your brain whynotboth.jpg’d you?
“one day”, actually. We arrived at nightfall yesterday, and this is early morning.
Awwww, end already. :(((((((( But I want my ancient Egyptian artifacts! How else will I inadvertently summon Nyarlathotep in his Mask of the Black Pharaoh without ancient Egyptian artifacts? :((((((
Wow, @Dariel, what a man of timing you are.
I come back to the Forum after a little life-imposed hiatus, and my first post back is congratulating @Nerull and @MahatmaDagon on their recent release, Unsupervised. I found myself feeling nostalgic for their Lovecraftian horror title, Highlands, Deep Waters, one of my favorite IF games ever, and made another post calling it the greatest horror CoG/HG by far.
However, starting what must be my 500th playthrough of that game lead to me wanting a new Lovecraftian CoG/HG. There still arent enough, in my opinion.
You know how much I enjoyed your own lovely Egyptian eldritch horror piece, and so I was doubly delighted to see this pop up in the feed. As always, I’m late to the party, but enthusiastic nonetheless.
I’m gonna be brutally honest, I think you have a certain knack for horror that you have yet to fully tap into. So when I see the warnings on this game that it will lack any kind of gore, body horror, and such, I was a bit disappointed. I know those things aren’t your usual styles, but they are staples of the cosmic and Lovecraftian horror subgenres, and so I ask myself just how far are you going to go in this game, and are you interested in telling just as creepy and hopeless a story as your previous attempt, or is this a much more casual and tame experience?
I played the demo and must say, your writing has definitely improved. You have always been a good writer, my old friend. But it was obvious over our history together that you’ve been trying to find your style over multiple projects. I remember feeling a little guilty when you dropped your first big fantasy project (I was PurpleDragonWrangler), but knew you just needed time to come to terms with your own abilities. I wanted to support you more on your teahouse project which seemed like a spinoff of sorts of the previous project, but it just wasn’t my cup of tea.
So, seeing this, I was glad to see you kind of return to your roots. I have to say, I very much enjoy the demo so far, and you start sewing the seeds of dread immediately in this story. The characters are immediately well-defined, and you have come a long way in setting up the story better, a complaint I know I had with The Hidden Sanctum.
Luna has got to be my favorite character so far. I’m a sucker for wholesome characters, so I can’t wait to try (and fail) to keep her away from the horrors that await.
That begs the question again, though. How much teeth will this story have with its scares? Will it have the true stakes of the genre and deal with death and possible insanity, or is this more of an innocent mystery game with Lovecraftian elements?
I feel I must disclaim for other users that I’m well aware a horror game does not need certain features or tropes to be successful, but I do wish to adjust my expectations accordingly.
Either way, I am very interested in this project, and will be watching this thread, curiosity piqued.
@JBento Thank you for your wonderful feedback! And yeah, some of those mistakes are there because I have yet to do a proper edit. I will do one once I finish the chapter. And I know it’s a small update. I’m grateful you played through it!
@Lucha_Markre Hi there, welcome back!
It’s not going to be casual. You can both die and lose your sanity, and the same goes for all the NPCs. There will be scary things–such as those moments in Chapter 1–but the focus will be more on the fear of the unknown and on the overarching sense of existential dread than on the things you can simply see and describe.
I totally see your argument, but for me, cosmic horror is more about what you can’t describe than what you can. I would say the level of visual horror shouldn’t be higher than what I wrote in Temple of Endless Night. I don’t think there will be gore, but it will definitely not be a laid-back, casual, tame experience. I’m going for a total opposite to my previous game (Everbloom). There, the stakes were pretty much irrelevant. Here, they are very high.
It was by no means your fault, I assure you! It was just something I had to do. I will be writing a new version of Elder Crystals after this project. I’m currently revising the universe and the plot. I made a post about it on Tumblr if you’re interested.
In summary, there will be high stakes. Everyone can die, including the MC (there’s already one potential MC death in Chapter 1…). Everyone can go mad, including the MC. The MC health and sanity meters are in the stats window, and NPC sanity meters are hidden. I am also considering different ending variants based on the backgrounds on top of the vanilla endings.
I hope that answers your questions. It’s great to see you back!
I’m not into horror but I will give a try thank you so much for your hard work
PROGRESS UPDATE | September 8, 2024
Hi guys! I know it’s been a while, but I’ve just been dealing with some health issues, which made me unable to write as much as I would have liked. There is an update on its way (20k+ words), and it should arrive by the end of this coming week. The update will also feature a thoroughly edited version of Chapter 1. There are no changes in the story, but I went through the whole thing when I didn’t feel well enough to write and ended up rewriting quite a few paragraphs.
Hope you’re all doing well!
Oh, no, health issues! Take care of yourself!
CONTENT UPDATE | September 25, 2024
The second portion of Chapter 2 is here, and here’s what it adds to the game.
- This update includes the second portion of Chapter 2, which is about 18.500 words, excluding code. It doesn’t make a single playthrough much longer, but it introduces the first scene for each background. Each background can lead you to a background-specific ending (there will also be endings available to all players), and these scenes kick off the storylines.
- I also edited Chapter 1. There have been no changes to the story or choices, but I was not too fond of the way I wrote certain things. I hope the current version is okay!
- The next patch will close Chapter 2.
No problem! I went through the files and saw one scene in which I used ‘archeologist’. It will be fixed in the next update. Thank you!
Playing through quickly, I noticed that sometimes, the game refers to you as an Egyptologist and sometimes, an archaeologist. Maybe pick one term for consistency?
I might try playing again with another background in future.
PROGRESS UPDATE | October 24, 2024
Hi guys! I know there have been no updates since September, but I’m here to tell you that the final portion of Chapter 2 should be out for Halloween!
Good luck. No promises, but I’ll see if I can do another run through after the next update is out.
CONTENT UPDATE | October 31, 2024
This update closes Chapter 2, and it also marks the point where your MC’s reactive nature will transform into a more active stance. I know it sounds a bit too technical, but you’ll see what I mean when you play through Chapter 3 in the next update.
- This update includes the final portion of Chapter 2, which is about 13.000 words.
- There will be a follow-up update for this chapter once I’m done revising it and checking for any remaining typos–no worries there.
- This update also removed one of the stats–at least for now–as I realized I haven’t used it even once. These technical aspects are all still fluid so we’ll see where we end up.
- The next update will bring you the first part of Chapter 3. Chapter 3 will include much more romance and flirting, some conflict–finally, moving from reacting to acting, learning some dark things about the manor, more reactivity to health and sanity, as well as the next part of your MC’s background-related plots.
#Shocked, I slam the piano closed.
Shut
Sadly, Egyptian isn’t a language you’re familair with.
Familiar
There are four windows up here, two on the right and two on the left, but three of them are painted with something black, and the fourth one is so dirty that it hardly does anythign. The light is barely enough through to keep you from tripping over things.
Anything
*if (profanityfilter=true)
“Shoot,” you curse under your breath. “Why can’t you just open?” Annoyed, you throw the box against the floor, but that seems to do even less than your ministrations. “I guess you’re gonna be stubborn.”
*if (profanityfilter=true)
“Shit,” you curse under your breath. “Why can’t you just open?” Annoyed, you throw the box against the floor, but that seems to do even less than your ministrations. “I guess you’re gonna be stubborn.”
Check the true/false setting. By the way, that’s a lot of copy pasted text all for profanity control.
*if (profanityfilter=false)
Tyler’s eyes widen. “The fuck is that supposed to mean?!”
*if (profanityfilter=true)
Tyler’s eyes widen. “The hell is that supposed to mean?!”
I think the h word is considered profanity too, even if it’s lesser profanity than the f word. That said, I see the h word used outside of the profanity filters sometimes, and treated like profanity at other times. Why am I even commenting about this?