Here we are. The first part of Chapter 3 is here, which means we’ll SOON be moving from the reactive mode to the proactive one; mostly in the second half of the chapter.
The update includes the first portion of Chapter 3, which is about 6.500 words.
This portion mostly moves the main story forward, while also including more personality and sanity checks than before.
The next portion will be longer, and it will feature much more romance, including proper romantic and/or sexual encounters with the love interests.
From semi-related news, I recently sat down to think about the endings for the game, and I somehow already wrote two of them. While there will be “good” endings, I think more than half will be pretty grim. And when I say grim, I mean death or madness.
*if (profanityfilter=false)
"The fuck is that supposed to mean?" Tyler snorts, pulling you all out of the haze.
*if (profanityfilter=false)
"What's that supposed to mean?" Tyler snorts, pulling you all out of the haze.
Work on the next part of Chapter 3 is going… Well, not ‘surprisingly well,’ but at least it’s going.
I had no issues writing the horror/sanity bits, but the romance scenes turned out to be trickier than I expected. I’m done with Caleb and Julia, but I still have Tyler and Luna to write. I hope to have them all done by the end of the year and push the update out by then, too.
Turns out I still need to rewrite parts of Tyler’s romantic scene because I don’t like how they turned out. The update will be out this week, but sadly not by NYE.
Just discovered this gripping WiP. I’m a sucker for eldritch horror and I’ll be sure to leave feedback at some point.
I really love the randomized events, and paying no such attention to my sanity!
The one thing that put me on the back foot when I first started reading this was getting thrust into having to put 4 new faces to 4 new names (mind you, I didn’t read the Romance Spoilers).
It might just be me but I’ve a hard time of keeping track of information when books/IFs throw a bunch of characters talking to me in a scene. It makes me stop and focus on: OK. Who’s who? What makes these characters distinctive from one another? Why should I care about these people?
Not necessarily a bad thing. Just something I personally struggle with from time to time when I’m given a lot of information to try to process early in a story.
Another update is here. I know it took quite a bit of time, but things should speed up now that we’re in the new year. I have a very different schedule now, so you can expect to see the updates much more frequently. Perhaps I might even write the whole thing by April?
This update includes the second portion of Chapter 3, which is about 10.500 words.
This portion moves the story forward just by a little and is more about romance and/or relaxation before the next significant development that will happen in the morning.
Basically, the update includes the rest of the evening and lets you start a relationship (actual relationship or friends-with-benefits) with any of the four love interests.
Thank you so, so much for the feedback! Do you think it might help if I add a few sentences about each character to the Codex portion of the stats screen?
Just giving you a heads’ up that the server that supports Dashingdon will be shut down by the end of January.
You’ll want to migrate any and all demos for your WiP to the new hosting service. https://cogdemos.ink/. The support thread for cogdemos.ink is here and it’s run by a user named EvilChani.
It’s not really an update–though I have made quite a bit of progress on the next part of Chapter 3, so no worries there–but I moved the demo for Eldritch Tales from Dashingdon to CoGDemos.
Also, to everyone playing, I didn’t play through the whole thing on the new platform–since there were no content changes–so I’d appreciate it if you could notify me of any potential issues (incl. the saves since they seem to be different now).
Chapter 3 is almost done. I’m more or less done with the writing and just need to edit the last 10k words. The demo should get an update (ca. 24.000 words) within a few days at most!
Another update is here, and this one finally closes Chapter 3. I’m not sure how it happened but this chapter ended up being just a bit longer than Chapter 2. The demo (and the game overall too) sits not at about 114.000 words + whatever I have written for Chapter 5 in my files.
This update includes the last portion of Chapter 3, which is about 24.000 words.
This portion moves the story forward by quite a lot, but I won’t mention any details to avoid story spoilers. There’s an investigative element, some little romantic mentions, a ton of weird things, and–maybe most importantly–you get to choose what the final two chapters will be about. To avoid spoilers, let’s just say there are two main story paths. They don’t translate directly into endings but determine what your group will focus on.
Oh, and there’s a new–not bad–ending achievable in Chapter 3.
As always, I fixed some things in earlier chapters.
To be safe, I’d recommend a fresh save.
Now that I’m done with Chapter 3, I will need to work on the second part of Chapter 5 to get a clearer sense of how I want to work through Chapter 4.
Just played the demo and really enjoyed it! The range of reactions you’ve provided for the MC are really nice; it’s fun to pick whether or not to embrace the supernatural elements vs insisting there’s nothing out of the ordinary going on.
And I especially appreciate the chances to wander off alone (yeah, I am probably going to find a death ending sooner rather than later haha) and how much of the house still feels open to exploration and the unknown. Great work!
Just a bit of an update: I’ve written the first 18% (7400 words) of Chapter 5, which is basically a few of the endings. So far, it’s all bad endings with tiny exceptions.
One thing I’ve noticed is that the epilogue section will only apply to the not-bad endings. The bad ones… well, let’s just say there’s not much to put in those endings…
It took me a while, but I just finished writing all the endings–basically, it’s the second half of Chapter 5. There are ten of them (14 if we count variations), and they’re 26.800 words overall. Each background gets a unique ending–though you don’t have to go that route–and there are also some available for everyone.
On top of that, you also have the ending in Chapter 1 (bad), Chapter 3 (non-bad), and there will be one more in Chapter 4 (non-bad). There might be one last ending in the first half of Chapter 5, and that one will be the final non-bad ending.
So… 3 non-bad endings, and over a dozen bad ones…
By the way, NPCs only participate in the non-bad endings. Once you move past the point of no return in the horror aspects of the story (and you never have to as long as you have enough sanity at the start of Chapter 5), things shift to you and your perspective.
Since these endings are in Chapter 5, there’s no update to the demo this time. Starting tomorrow, I’m returning to Chapter 4, so a new update should be ready in a few weeks.
Congratulations on your progress! I haven’t had a chance to sit down and read this since your previous update, so hopefully I can motivate myself to take a gander and leave some feedback!
