Honor Bound: Creme de la Creme 4—Protect a boarding school as a military bodyguard! [OUT NOW]

I wonder how many of us picked injuries that mimic bits of us that are giving us trouble…

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With Honor Bound in the works, I want to play CDC again with my OC Eugene, but Male!Hartman goes by Eugene… I’m worried that will get confusing.

Hartmann doesn’t get referred to by first name very much so you may be OK! (Referring to duplicate names was something I liked the idea of, as at that age it’s always such a big deal when people have the same name, but it ended up falling by the wayside as there were so many characters :sweat_smile:)

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I did debate choosing the head injury, as I also have migraines. Convenient for fictional characters, that they get to choose just one!

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Yeah. Given the choice I would have chosen back, hip, and knee (yay cars :roll_eyes:) but you can’t be too beat up if they thought you were still fit enough for a bodyguarding job, even a most likely unnecessary one, right?

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I wonder what injuries you chose and what branch of the military service you chose.

I normally go for head or leg/knee for the injury and the exploration/disaster relief sectors. I’m still a martial pacifist in nearly all games from CoG that I play.

Keep in mind that such background information, while not absolutely essential to the plot, can come in handy down the line.

Ah, it’s always nice to see progress on the action scenes! The fact that your production schedule is a lot faster is surprising.

Let’s just say Raffi needs to stand on their own two feet more often and not be expecting X to show up and bail them out nearly every time.

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I’ve just been prodding around to find this, and it’s proving a bit elusive to track down. I don’t suppose you remember what happened in your Royal Affairs recap plot-wise? And whether you picked your options and/or gender selection individually or randomised?

By the way, I’m really pleased to hear this! I can’t remember why I didn’t do it in Royal Affairs (possibly it didn’t feel like it made sense for the royal; possibly I didn’t want it to feel repetitive) but I had a bit of feedback saying people wanted more chances to boost their stats in that beta, so I thought I’d bring it back so there’s some nice branching for variation and getting-to-know-you scenes rather than just “I work on XYZ skill for a bit”.

Oof, sorry to hear that :green_heart: If it “helps”… I sometimes change up the descriptions to reflect muscle groups overcompensating, so the lung injury will also sometimes affect the MC’s hip or the knee one will affect the lower back because of tension etc. Yay?

Yes! I have been enjoying taking it into account. In a section I was writing the other day, there are some references to the fact that the PC trained people / was an explorer / was a medic and there were some others earlier as well. I like to thread it through as it’s been a big part of the PC’s life; I’ll probably go through and add in more once the draft is done because I really enjoy that sort of thing when I’m playing too :slight_smile:

I’ll be interested to see if there’s any that are particularly popular or unpopular to pick!

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upgrades again, I see! CDLC had them. It’s interesting to see them return in a different context.

I randomized. It had the royal siding with Fabien against Trevelyan, but they got exposed. I’d give more details, but the save is on my desktop, which I can’t access right now.

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Nice, I’ll take another look - thank you! Something fiddly going on with the randomising subroutines, I suspect.

That (and remembering to use your turn signals so the pedestrians in the crosswalk know whether to run or not) works! :+1:t5:

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I’ve put up a minor update with some tweaks and small fixes, mostly on the stats page. Please let me know if the recursion error rears its ugly head - I have tested the save slots and it seems to be working, on desktop Firefox at least, but if it comes up again I can revisit.

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Tiny update fixing custom pronouns for the Royal Affairs protagonist.

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I know it‘s been said before but I really love that you can play as an older MC and romance older characters as well. It feels so refreshing to see. I also appreciate the inclusion of so many different forms of asexuality/aromance (needing a close bond first, having these kinds of desires seldomly, etc).

I‘m also really attached to all the characters and especially our charge already - not like my grumpy, stoic MC will admit that. I think I‘m going for the Martia/Korzha Poly first and it‘s just funny to imagine that Martia will essentially end up romancing the same person twice (and I think without them „flirting“ between my MC and Korzha would just mean intensely staring at each other from across the room).

I too, by the way, have chosen an injury that mirrors my own (spine). Again this feels so refreshing to be able to play as a disabled protagonist and to have different ways to deal with it, including but not limited to medication. Everytime I can choose a cane I‘m a happy person.

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Oh that all really means a lot, thank you so much! I’m really glad you’re enjoying it and I hope the writing about the injury continues to feel real.

Hahaha, I love it!

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Honor Bound Fortnightly Update:

I have had some stumbling blocks this fortnight, mostly in the shape of my child getting sick, then me getting sick - I had an ear infection which laid me out up for a week. But I’m feeling better now, and am back in the zone.

I finished drafting Chapter 5, which I’m so pleased about! I also went back and added some things to Chapter 3, which is going up on Patreon on October 3rd, and general bits and pieces here and there in the earlier chapters too, mostly more flavour about responsiveness to choices about the PC’s backstory. And adding in some more mentions of cats.

Current wordcount: 228878
Fortnight’s wordcount: 10347
Average playthrough wordcount: 55745

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For subscribers at £6+, Chapter 3 of Honor Bound is up on Patreon!

The early access demo is now around 135,000 words! Things you can expect from this chapter:

  • go on a trip with students and their families, all of whom will be paying a lot of attention to how you conduct yourself
  • more friendly, flirty, and tense developments, both between you and between other characters
  • a confrontation!
  • you can kiss some people; you can sleep with some people (one at a time… so far. And the steamiest scenes I’ve ever published); you can have some romantic interludes without either of those things…
  • stick to your job or abandon your responsibilities

It’ll go up for everyone to play at the start of November, and in the meantime I’m continuing to tweak and polish what’s currently up. In fact, I have put up a small update today to the public version which includes a couple of added choices in Chapter 2 related to Denario.

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And for subscribers at £11+, there is a bonus character study about Matia aged 31 up today! In it, a mountainous expedition high in the Arracin Mountains has gone dangerously wrong.

The team’s hoarding lantern oil, so the lantern casts jagged, uneasy shadows over them; they must have been in the dark all this time. At least it’s warm in here still, from close bodies and the insulation of the tent fabric. As the wind catches the flap, the others groan and protest.

Read it and five more bonus stories here.

Towards the end of this week I will likely put up a small, typo-fixing, clarifying, variable-adding-for-future-use, kind of an update. In the meantime I am mostly working on the Royal Affairs epilogue - which is nearly drafted! - and expect to put up Chapter 3 here on 7th November.

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Honor Bound Fortnightly Progress Report:

Just a little one this time as I’ve been mostly working on the Royal Affairs epilogue. It is mostly planning and coding for Chapter 6, and some rethinking of a minor plotline. I’ve figured out what was bothering me about it and an alternative that I feel really good about. Hooray!

Honor Bound current wordcount: 232280
Honor Bound fortnight’s wordcount: 3402

I didn’t end up putting up the typo-fixing update mentioned above, but it was only tiny anyway - for the next couple of weeks I’ll be focusing on Chapter 6, will be looking at implementing some Chapter 2 feedback I’ve had, and will put up Chapter 3 here on 7th November.

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Chapter 3 of Honor Bound is up! The total demo is now around 135,000 words. Things you can expect from this chapter:

  • go on a trip with students and their families, all of whom will be paying a lot of attention to how you conduct yourself
  • more friendly, flirty, and tense developments, both between you and between other characters
  • a confrontation!
  • you can kiss some people; you can sleep with some people (one at a time… so far); you can have some romantic interludes without either of those things…
  • stick to your job or abandon your responsibilities

Enjoy! I’d love to hear what you think, whether here or via the anonymous feedback form.

Note! This version will need you to restart your game as I added a lot of variables behind the scenes since the last update. I have removed the chapter-based checkpoints as they were becoming unwieldy, in preparation for the integrated ChoiceScript checkpoints to be implemented later. But save slots are still there as usual. If you are replaying earlier chapters, you may notice that your character is more likely to feel bothered by their pain levels; this is because of some tweaks to the thresholds at which it becomes a problem for the PC.

Second note! The intimate scenes in this game are much more explicit than the ones in Creme de la Creme or Royal Affairs, and rather more so than the ones in Noblesse Oblige. If you don’t want to see that, pick the fade-to-black options or you can entirely switch sexual content on and off using the stats screen. There is a separate NSFW discussion thread if you would like to discuss that element in more detail!

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