Thanks so much, I’m really glad you enjoyed the demo a while back! As Denario doesn’t appear until a bit later than the other characters, there’s less detail about him in the first post.Denario’s a male character who’s an old friend of the MC’s, and is always the same age as the MC. He has less screentime than the other romanceable characters, but is romanceable. He can be romanced monogamously or alongside others - either in an agreed-upon non-exclusive relationship, or secretly romancing him while dating someone else.
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I see! Thank you for the reply!
Your books are awesome! Royal Affairs is so far my favorite!
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Thank you so much, I really appreciate it!
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I was looking at the list of ROs, and I apologize if this has been asked and answered before, but what do “agender,” “genderqueer,” “transfem,” and “transmasc” mean in this context? In particular, what’s the difference between agender and genderqueer, and what’s the difference between “transfem” and a trans woman, etc.
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(with the caveat that not everyone who relates to these categories feels the same way as the characters do, etc):
Nonbinary Fiore feels aligned with womanhood, and trans women in particular; they feel trans, and didn’t feel connected to the idea of being a boy when they were younger, but don’t feel entirely like a woman themself. (transfem)
Nonbinary Raffi feels aligned with masculinity while feeling neither like a butch/masculine woman nor exactly like a man. (transmasc)
Nonbinary Korzha feels comfortable in opting out of gender, feeling that it’s irrelevant - they don’t feel like they have a gender and feel very certain in that. (agender)
Nonbinary Savarel doesn’t feel like they have a gender either, although it’s less a comfortable-opting-out and more a trying-not-to-think-about-it. (agender)
Nonbinary Matia feels like they do have a gender, and that it’s their own thing that’s fully removed from a man/woman category or spectrum. (genderqueer)
Some of the nonbinary versions of characters have had healthcare relating to their gender, and some haven’t. Not all of this comes up in the game directly (though I’ve got it on my to-do list to have moments to chat about it more) or on all branches, and they don’t use the words I’m using. Thank you for asking!
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Thank you for answering! That all makes a lot of sense, and now I’m actually really excited to get to know these characters in all their different variations, starting tonight!
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You put so much thought into nonbinary characters; I don’t recall seeing specifics of nonbinary identities in other works. Even two agender characters have different flavour to their identities. This is very impressive!
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Thank you! 
It sort of happened organically - once I knew I was including binary trans characters, I wanted to go into more detail with the nonbinary ones as well. I had a bit of free time before I started writing properly, so I wrote a bunch of notes about how all the characters (including the cis ones) feel about their bodies, gender, and sexuality. As I say not all of that is in the game at the moment, especially as some of the characters are more private/less emotionally open than others, but I’d like to expand a bit on what’s there during the beta playtesting period.
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@HarrisPS
was able to get selected as a Beta Reader.
Wasn’t sure if I should submit this via email or not but are the cheats supposed to be in the Beta or does that get added after Beta is done ?
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It’s best to send feedback to the email as it’s easier for me to sort through it when it’s all in one place, but questions are fine here 
The cheats will be added after the beta - I haven’t completed the achievement guides fully yet.
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A sort-of-fortnightly, almost-end-of-August progress report:
I’ve been on holiday for the last couple of weeks and had a truly lovely time with family in the countryside. That two weeks coincided with the first fortnight of beta testing, for which you can see here the changes and fixes I’ve been making. So far I’ve been getting really thoughtful, helpful feedback and I appreciate it hugely!
The changes I’ve been making have been relatively small scale so far, though they make a big difference (and there are a LOT of changes now since the public demo).
In the middle of next week, I’ll be back to my usual work routine. So, after Tuesday I’m hoping to take a look at some of the following: more lead-in to the Fiore/Savarel polyamorous relationship, some tweaks to [various redacted spoilery stuff relating to less successful endings to make them more satisfying], expanding PC responses to [some other spoilery late-game stuff], tweaking the pacing of some leisure-time scenes, and more conversation between nonbinary PCs and NPCs about the fact that you’re both nonbinary.
…plus anything else that comes up. What’s interesting is that (so far) there hasn’t been anything really majorly complicated to add, unlike with my other games, so it’s going a bit more straightforwardly than it has done on other occasions. I hope to use this time to do some more playtesting myself as well, because I always spot more things to edit when I do that.
Oh! The other thing I’ve been doing is writing a short interactive story about something from the MC’s childhood with Denario. That’s not far away from being done, so I’ll hope to put that on Patreon sometime early in September, and then it’ll go up publicly a little while after that.
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Another update for the beta test is up! This includes a looooot of bugfixes for obscure things that I’m sure most people didn’t even encounter yet, plus some much more noticeable fixes, and a lot of smallish-scale additions/expansions/clarifications/tweaks.
I still have a lot of expansion planned for the end sections - I’m not entirely sure how long they’ll take as I’ve got a long list, but I’ll be carrying on with it tomorrow.
I’m immensely grateful for the thoughtfulness of the feedback I’ve been getting! It’s so useful and some of the comments have entertained me wonderfully as well - which is lovely during a stage of writing that can be hard work!
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I was reading beta testing thread, and I have a question regarding poly romances. If MC is simultaneously flirting with two compatible characters (Matia and Korzha or Savarel and Fiore), will these two characters automatically have interest in each other as well as MC? Or will they only develop romantic feelings for each other if the MC initiates poly relationship? I want my MC to flirt with two compatible characters at the same time, but I don’t want them to be into each other - is this possible?
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Slight spoilers:
No, the characters don’t get together if the MC isn’t romancing them both - the MC is what can bring romance to the relationships. With Matia and Korzha, they remain close friends, and with Fiore and Savarel they become friends over the course of the game.
They work slightly differently because of Fiore not being in the same location all the time, but both pairs will also bring it up if the PC is flirting with/dating both at once, to check what’s going on - they either notice if it’s in front of them, or talk about it amongst themselves.
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Don’t know if you said anything about this but is there going to be a cheat setting?
Yes.
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The beta test has been going for a month now - how time flies! The most recent update went up yesterday and I’m very interested to hear what people think about the additions to the final chapter (and whether they work properly… they’re complicated, heh).
I’d had feedback from various people saying that it would be good to include more details about the PC’s career plans and living situations after the game, and also about the PC’s feelings about both those things (and about what had happened during the game). So I added… well, around 22,000 words to the last chapter to help flesh all of that out, plus many more details about what characters with whom the PC is on good terms are up to.
Overall so far in beta testing, I’ve added around 34,000 words to the game - most of it in that final chapter - which puts it at about 580,000 words and 97,000 words for a playthrough. Whew! No wonder it took me most of the day to do my own playtest the other day (in which I had a lot of hubris, decided not to play with stat indicators on and not to check the code, ruined my very dutiful PC’s career and had a dramatic breakup in the late game. Despite all the stress my PC went through, I finished the game feeling bittersweet but good… so hopefully that will be true for other players too.)
You can have a look at the changelogs for the beta here to see more about what I’ve been doing!
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I’m not certain whether I’ve missed a title I ought to have played beforehand. I read through Crème de la Crème and Royal Affairs. Have I overlooked a third book?
The last book I read concluded with the group each going their separate ways for university, military service, or other pursuits.
There is a book that takes place between Crème de la Crème and Royal Affairs. It’s called Noblesse Oblige.
However, each game stands alone, with a different PC and cast of main characters. It’s not necessary to play them all, or to play them in the “correct” order, although if you do it’s a nice bonus to see characters from earlier games making a cameo appearance in later ones.
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I remember now! Thank you for the reminder about Noblesse Oblige. I regret having overlooked it previously due to its seemingly mundane and claustrophobic setting, which, at the time, did not align with my preference for high fantasy or the grandiosity of upper-class aristocracy and blitzkrieg playstyles at the time. I find myself in a different mindset now, more open to exploring varied themes. Thanks for the recommendation.
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