Hello to anybody stopping by from the Upcoming CoG Releases 2023 thread 
Most recent release: Ten Chapter Demo (1 June 2024). This version allows for five save slots.
OR, grab the compiled html version here. This version has per chapter checkpoints, allowing you to return to the start of any chapter with choices and stats intact (access through the stats menu):
Hexfinder-June2024build.html (5.0 MB)
You can now add the game to your wishlist on Steam! Please do this, even if youâre likely to buy it elsewhere (or even if you donât know if youâll buy it at all). Adding the game to a Steam wishlist helps feed and invoke the algorithm demons.
It is 1650 in England. Five years have passed since Queen Charlotte Iâs Royalists triumphed at the battle of Naseby. The parliamentary figureheads are dead, imprisoned, or scattered to the wind. Yet suspicion and paranoia still grip the nation. Hexfinder General Matthew Hopequins insists that hexcrafters and rebel exiles still plot the queenâs downfall. Others question the queenâs religious sympathies, and see Pontifex plotters around every corner. To the north, on the outskirts of Newcastle, a Royalist army sits in stalemate with Scottish forces.
You will play a hexfinder in the employ of Queen Charlotteâs Anglican Church, tasked with seeking out the witches and warlocks (colloquially known as hexcrafters) who threaten her fair nation. It is June, and the summer solstice approaches. Charlotte announces her intention to return to Oxford, her seat of power during the most turbulent years of the civil war. Assigned to investigate the Oxfordshire villages along the queenâs route of travel, you will begin to uncover signs of heretical treachery at the heart of your sovereignâs court.
Rumors abound that Oliver Cromwell cheated death at Naseby, sustained by diabolical and unholy sorceriesâŚ
Features:
- Be a zealous scourge of all heresy, a cynic whoâs merely in it for the coin, or take a more charitable view of the accused.
- Pursue fame and prestige in Charlotteâs court through your deeds, and perhaps even catch her eye as a new favoriteâŚ
- Uncover treachery within the queenâs own court (this traitor will change in different playthroughs!)
- Or aid a parliamentary plot to bring down your monarch.
- Keep hexcrafting at armâs length, or risk the suspicion of your peers by embracing the arcane and occult.
- Engage in thoroughly heretical smooching with four or five (depending on how ambitious I get this time!) different romantic partners.
- Name your horse, and (if sufficiently gifted/deluded) maybe even have a good chat with them.
- Wear a big black hat, like, all the time.
Thatâs all fine, but when can we play some WIP chapters?
Right now, in fact! If you missed it at the top, the first ten chapters are playable here.
This playable portion will expand as I write new chapters (more updates to come!) Current total word count is around 660k, and a single play-through is 115k or so in length.
I also wrote Mask of the Plague Doctor in 2020, in case youâre enjoying this WiP and thinking âhm, did he do anything else?â
Hark! A second document.
Whatâs this? A new letter from Primkins?
And definitely loving the background documents!