I’m delighted to let you know that I’ve sent the full draft of Honor Bound to my editor Abby!
Beta testing started in mid-August and since then I’ve added around 50,000 words to the game. Some of this was expanding things throughout the game, and most of it was expanding the epilogue sequence to include LOTS more detail about where the PC is living at the end, their career choices, who they’re living with if anyone, letters from friends and loved ones if they’re living in different places, and rundowns of what major characters are up to if the PC’s living in the same town/location as them but not living in the same house.
That whole section ended up incredibly branchy and complicated, but I’m really proud of it - I think it caps off the game nicely. Yesterday I played through several of the ending scenes and felt really good about them, which is a nice feeling to have 
Honor Bound is now going to copyedit, and it’s looking like the release should be somewhere in early December, depending how long the copyediting takes.
Copyediting is certainly a big job, because right now the game stats are:
Total wordcount: 592898 words
Average playthrough: 98553 words
So each playthrough sees about 16% of what’s there, which means a ton of variety from playthrough to playthrough… and there’s a huge amount there to see even on one playthrough.
I’m incredibly grateful to all the testers from start to finish who have cheerled, supported, and given feedback that’s helped get this game into shape.
I’ve learned a huge amount from making this project, and have stretched out of my comfort zone in a variety of ways. It’s interesting seeing what writing-process-mistakes I didn’t do because of learning from Royal Affairs, and where I committed whole new coding crimes. (Next project, I am going to go easier on the nested *gosubs so it’s easier to troubleshoot and read. I am sure I will do something else that makes the code horrid to read.)
It’s the largest and most ambitious of my CoG games, and I’m proud of how the plot’s paced and pulls together. I’m incredibly fond of the characters - even if I put them through horrible things. It was so different writing characters who were older and more mature in various ways than the teenagers in Creme and Royal Affairs (and the young adults in Noblesse Oblige, who are all going through… a lot), but still with plenty of flaws, foibles, and hangups. I was delighted when characters surprised me, as well as when I could feel “oh, this is classic [character]” and their dialogue came naturally. There are some personality nuances that I’m not sure anyone will end up noticing, but felt lovely to put in because I had such a strong sense of who the characters were.
I’m also really pleased with how much I’ve personalised the PC’s dialogue and internal voice. When the PC speaks in the text (and often in the dialogue options), their tone and vibe is almost always informed by how their personality has been expressed by the player, which works with the choices the player’s making to make the PC feel their own. I really wanted to make the PC feel like an adult who’s gone through Some Major Stuff and is in a position of figuring out their principles and purpose because of it: there are a ton of different ways in which they can respond to what’s happened to them and to what happens throughout the game.
I’ve really loved exploring a new part of the Creme de la Creme setting and show such a different culture to Westerlin. I hope you all enjoy Honor Bound once it’s out!
(and… please wishlist on Steam if you haven’t already - it really helps!)
