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

[HarrisPS]

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!)

[HarrisPS]

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!)

[HarrisPS]

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!

[Victoriya]

It’s coming out in December!

But I want it now…

[HarrisPS]

In the leadup to Honor Bound coming out, I’m posting on my blog about various things relating to it - starting with the setting, which most people reading this will probably know about, and today I posted a rundown about building your MC in Honor Bound, some of my thought processes about doing so, and how I made the game responsive to MC’s background, skills, and personality. Hope you enjoy!

[Foxcat]

Okay, the haircut thing is very cool. I’m gonna make my PC cut their hair just for the heck of it. Also just the amount of care and detail with the multireplace flavour text is amazing!

[HarrisPS]

Hee, my favourite flex was a bit where you’re greeting a romance interest after a while (and having had a dramatic haircut), and depending on the height/build combinations they can hug the PC and swing them around Complicated to set up but so fun to encounter when playing!

[HarrisPS]

This week I wrote on my blog about Fiore, the process of writing them, and some things I thought about when I was coming up with them as an idea, and how I developed them throughout the game. Enjoy!

[HappyPotato]

Oh my god! I played this game over and over so many times and still didn’t get that scene! This is absolutely delightful.

And I love how much thought you’ve put into fleshing out the setting and the background (religion, culture etc), Harris! Reminds me of the time when I read LOTR as a kid and then proceeded to devour the various appendices. I loved the body positivity (or is body neutrality the better term?) for the PC and the romanceable characters too! And I loved playing around with gender and sexuality. (But most of all, I really appreciate the demi/gray option, since it resonates with me strongly, and I always do at least one playthrough where I play as a character who’s very similar to me.)

And something that probably hasn’t been mentioned yet, this game tackles anxiety pretty well, not just the physical injuries we got from our time.

I can’t wait for it to release! Why isn’t it December already!

[HarrisPS]

Oh this is so lovely, thank you so much I’m poorly with a cold today so this was so nice to hear - a wonderful pick-me-up! I’m really happy you enjoyed the demi/grey option as well!

[HappyPotato]

Oh no! I hope you feel better soon!

[HarrisPS]

Thank you, it seems to be slowly clearing up fortunately!

[HarrisPS]

Next up on the blog, here’s a post about writing Denario! Hope you enjoy. Denario’s role in the story from origin to writing is the one that changed the most out of all the major characters!

[jc_pearlorchid]

OMG, I’m so excited!
How come I haven’t seen this forum until now, it’s been up since last year LOL.

[HarrisPS]

It’s a good time to learn about it - not too long to wait until the release!

[jc_pearlorchid]

I’m glad I don’t have to feel like waiting long. haha
I’ve been replaying CdlC, RA, and NO so many times.
I’m most excited about cameo, can’t wait to see my previous MCs in a different view.

By the way, Honor Bound seems interesting with these Trans character, I can’t wait to see how you’re going make them, like how they’re going to appear differently from cis chars.

I’m screaming!!! Valentina’s daughter is here! So, Ollie is almost 18 now.

[HarrisPS]

Yes, Oliver’s 17 at this point How quickly they grow up…

I’m so glad you’ve been enjoying replaying, and hope you have fun with this one!

[HarrisPS]

I entirely forgot to share my character posts here

But: we are TWO WEEKS AWAY from Honor Bound being released!

And here are some blog posts about writing Matia, Raffi, and Savarel, including excerpts from their moments in the game!

[HarrisPS]

Less than a week to go!

Here’s my blogpost about writing Korzha, a character who has provoked the most strong and varied reactions of the cast - which I adore hearing about.

[Bridgetpearl]

This was so fun to play test. All of your characters are so interesting and unique.
Matia, Korzha and Savarel are my favorites, but Matia definitely won my heart!
I can’t wait to play the finished version. Best wishes for your release!