Hi first time posting in one of these but I think it will help keep me motivated and going on my project! plus I love community.
I took your adorable quiz - I’m a lil love bug.
I think my prologue is just about at 20K and I’m moving my chapter one to prologue bringing it to 40K as I continue character creation but I don’t want it over two lots of “chapters” essentially.
My aim is at least 100K per chapter (but prologue might be the only one that gets away with being less slightly).
I have my phone on hand so I’m constantly editing on it when I have a second, but I’ve noticed CSide cannot take me mass moving coding (it crashes everytime) so I’ll have to move the part of CC from chapter one into prologue once my laptop is good again.
Hope everyone is having a lovely February and 2026
Your interest check idea was really intriguing. 100k words per chapter is a pretty intense goal. I’m so curious why this amount, if you’re fine with answering.
My goal is to edit my website and add 200 words a day to it this month. (5600 words)
My other goal is to write 100 words a day for my other two games. Maybe 50 words per game. (2800 words)
That sounds exciting. I just put one of my own titles in the Amare Games Festival. I’m also hoping to finish my Introcomp entry for the Spring Thing too.
My goal for February is to continue 5 minutes of writing every day. This is a bit of a busy month for me, so I’m hoping to get things done when and where I can – even if I don’t get to keep a regular schedule.
Thanks for hosting the thread, @raywilson! Also, happy birthday to folks born this month. Wishing everybody luck with their monthly goals.
I didn’t post anything last month since it was such a chaotic month for me. But I’m here for February where everything will hopefully be settling down.
My primary goal for this month is to finish chapter 4-2 of Guardian of Time. This is probably an unrealistic goal, but I am tired of sitting on this chapter, and am dying to have it released, so I’m going to do the best I can and hope I surprise myself.
I know that no one cares but me, but I can’t help but feel bad when I sit on a chapter for this long. (my last update was July) My original goal for this chapter was to have it done by the end of last year, and here is February, still not that close. It weighs me down and stresses me out. Which is not helped by the fact that I did my last chapter in less time, and that one was much bigger.
January was a uniquely unproductive month, largely thanks to complications brought upon by local events (I live and work in Minneapolis/St. Paul). That said, working on my game was one of the few welcome distractions from all the awfulness that’s been going on here.
At the end of December I had begun writing the content for a series of a few dozen dates the two protagonists of my story go on with each other, and that’s what I’ve continued to focus on. While I enjoy standard dating simulators in the Tokimeki Memorial format, the point of these dates isn’t so much to ‘win’ but rather to establish the parameters of the characters’ relationship to each other, which will affect their options later in the story.
Once I’m done with that section, I just need to add some more scenes here and there and finally write a proper ending to this thing, then that’ll be the first major milestone out of the way.
Thanks so much for making the thread @raywilson! I got conversation hearts for my quiz result (interestingly I know them as lovehearts! I wonder if that’s a regional thing?)
For February I’m aiming to draft Chapter 6 of the secret project. It’s a big goal, but we’ll see how it goes!
I’ve just moved to the UK and I’ll stay here for a few months, it’s a job trip but I hope it will inspire me, somehow! (Hopefully not another tragedy. The UK seems fit for tragic stories, though.)
This month I’m going to work on the next The In-Between chapter! I also need to revamp After Dark’s code, so it’s going to be a busy month for me…
The Falrika the Alchemist Review links to reddit, and the Studies in Darkness Review links to the store page. I think Brian’s review for Studies in Darkness is here.
I’ve made amazing progress on Chapter 2 of The Rise of Cthulhu over the past three days, completing about a third of it. Of course, it will take me a while to manually test all of the possibilities. With the prologue and Chapter 1, it was simple for me to test things as I went, as there wasn’t that much to go through to get to the part I was testing, but now there’s quite a bit, so I’m waiting to test until I complete a large chunk. I’ve been doing Quicktest frequently, which works fine, but Randomtest is still being wacky. I had to reduce the number of iterations to 7000 in order to get it to not stop in the middle by the time I was done Chapter 1, and that’s now down to 4800. One reason for this is how I structured Chapter 1, where you can go to various locations in whatever order you want, but everything you do takes time. Eventually, you run out of time, and the game proceeds to the chapter’s final portion. I plan to do similar things in other chapters, including Chapter 2, so it’s likely Randomtest’s usefulness will be limited.
In January, I finished the first draft of chapter 2 of “Project Ghoul”, so the first goal for February is, of course, edits. I started in on those today. We’ll wait and see whether one round does the trick.
Thank you for the thread, @raywilson. And for introducing two new songs to my playlist.
The beatles always seem to have more songs I’ve never heard before.
(I’ve got ‘lovebug’ as my result.)
My goals for February are going to be:
Finish editing chapter 2 of Until Armistice
Ask an old friend if they’re willing to give it a read (and provide feedback!)
Restructure the outline based on character changes
Update the WIP post description
Draft the major scenes from chapter 3
I wish everyone a very safe, warm and productive month.
Thanks for the thread @raywilson! I got Heart shaped box as my quiz result, now it’s stuck in my head!
I managed to finally finish the 3rd chapter of Season of Shadows last week, so I’m now tempted to take a breather. But I’m posting in this thread so that I don’t.
My monthly goal is: I want to try and be experimental and finish a code skeleton for chapter four this month - I write and code on the fly so I’m curious to see if this will affect my thought processes and writing differently? I think I may struggle because I’m a pantser, but should be a good brain exercise. I don’t think it will be a loss either way, it’ll surely teach me something and be at least somewhat useful.
Are there any other pantsers here? I’m guessing there won’t be too many, the structural nature of IF does not lend itself to doing what you want
Does anyone else feel like this a bit whenever they post anything on their projects, haha? I always feel like I oscillate between feeling very happy / proud at getting something out to being anxious that it is not well executed enough, and back to feeling good about it again within the span of a few hours! Writing is a funny thing.
Depends on the thing - I’m the opposite of a pantser when it comes to overall plotting - Pactbinder had a three-act structure, endings and worldbuilding outlined before I was finished with the prologue. That said, I’m a complete pantser when it comes to actually writing and coding each individual chapter - I tend to have a one-sentence summary of what needs to happen in a chapter and then I led that outline take me where it will.
We are similar then. I do have a short plot outline; I know I need to work towards something, I can’t just free fall entirely with Interactive Fiction. And my characters have motivations. But whatever happens in the middle is a mystery, I really enjoy the journey!
My game made it to the underrated games poll this year. Hmm… seems like I couldn’t run away forever. I guess the full sequel goes on the Spring Thing now.
Meanwhile, I’ve finished the content update for Scarlet Sorceress, but I’ll need to do one more read through before that goes live.
(interestingly I know them as lovehearts! I wonder if that’s a regional thing?)
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Hmm… seems like I couldn’t run away forever. I guess the full sequel goes on the Spring Thing now. 