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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September Progress Report
As mentioned last week, I’ve been working hard on implementing fixes and other changes in response to playtester feedback. It’s been both busy and very helpful!
For Sneak Preview subscribers on my Patreon, I’ve put up a mini prequel game which is a day in the life of the Honor Bound PC, aged 17. It’s called Recruitment Day, and you can play it here!
For everyone, I’ve also re-uploaded the Honor Bound prologue that I made last year before I released the demo. Play it here!
And finally, I’ve updated the Chapter 1-3 public demo with all the various fixes/tweaks/polishes that I’ve been doing in beta. You can play it here!
Current wordcount: 589448 words
Current average playthrough length: 98518
It’s getting towards the end of the playtesting period now - it should be finishing up next week - so if you signed up to playtest, please send in your feedback! I’d love to hear it.
Oh, my crowning glory this week was discovering a bug that triggered after 44,936 iterations of RandomTest, in which the “player” had alienated all the characters in a way I didn’t know was possible. That’s now fixed, and I’ve added an achievement for this absurd play style (thanks for the suggestion @ViIsBae!)
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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!)
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As ever it’s not completely solidly set in stone, so the official stance is that Honor Bound’s coming late this year… but Steam currently lists it for 5th December, so keep an eye out! Not too much longer to go! 
Please wishlist if you haven’t already!
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