I saw this comment this morning which made me laugh, was fun to wake up to 
. Given the discussion about the hell hound in Phantasmagoria last month here as well, I’m starting to think there is a sizable market for games with pet-able, scary, otherworld not-dogs 
I feel seen.
If you’re into scary yet pettable dogs, I heartily recommend T. Kingfisher’s Nettle and Bone, which has a skeletal hound who is a Very Good Boy. (content notes: abuse, pregnancy and childbirth, death of children and just general death/blood/pain stuff)
Speaking of Very Good Boys, you might enjoy The Good Ghost by Passerine, from Ectocomp 2022. (Although I guess this recommendation is kind of a spoiler, since it’s not revealed until the end of the game that you’re playing the ghost of a dog.)
going back a few days, thank you for the wedding well wishes, those that gave them ^^. it was a wonderful day.
I’m currently grappling with small sections of my next chapter that seem to run away from me. It’s sort of a good problem to have? The words fly off the page when I’m enthused. I just wind up with what was intended as a brief underscoring of a plot point extending itself into a full conversation.
It’s left me musing about jumping on points for romance actually. So far there has only been flirting with any of the options, but I’m currently thinking… hey if the player has indicated their interest like three times already, I should probably give them a chance to progress things. Helps avoid the issue of making the start of the storyline too easy to miss.
(a little of me is worried that the action to conversation ratio is drifting out of alignment, but idk. the conversations aren’t pointless? maybe it’s cause it can feel self indulgent)
Yay! Congrats again! 
I love it when this happens.
Banter is one of my favorite things. Action is great, and needed, but conversation is just as important to me.
^^ Very much agree.
ummm…why did I make 2 IF’s…honestly.
I’m going to make a schedule for when I work on Pushed then another on Vengeance.
plan solved, but any other tips? 
This is what I always worry about with my romances. What if someone wants to start it early? How do those romance scenes work earlier in the plot? What do I do with the extra time at the end? Will that make the players that waited feel left out? How do I follow a story structure AND give the reader agency? It’s all so complicated…
I’m late to the party, but my contributions are:
From the ones you listed though, honestly I think either Adrift with Demons or A Duel with God would get the most interest from a reader base (even though I personally like A Chance of Rain the best)
Speaking from experience, you should concentrate on one or the other and finish the narrative copy of one before all else.
It is possible to work on more than one at once (Jacic might have a thought or two here) however, there are many pitfalls in working in such a manner and usually both projects end up suffering from the split efforts.
And here I am, routinely moving characters and plots from one game to another 
Good luck to everyone with their works! And happy birthday to those who was born in March!
My goal is to update with chapter 2, and ugh I’m not that sure in myself.
I have never been able to just work on one project at a time, but even for me I’ve found that it’s really hard to do a huge choicescript project and another project simultaneously.
In the 18 months while I was co-writing The Bread Must Rise, I also co-wrote a novel and wrote three other ~50,000 word text games. (Oh, and somehow managed my actual job…) Not necessarily recommended [lol] since I was often quite tired, but my brain still rebels sometimes and refuses to keep working until I’ve done other things. This time around, though, I’ve been a bit more focused.
That said, at some point it really just comes down to time management. Choicescript games especially tend to be huge, so sooner or later you need to make sure you can spend the hours you need to finish it. I think “concentrate on one or the other” is good advice especially if you’re new to game writing or juggling large projects!
Yes I have a few thoughts 
So I guess it depends on how your mind works and what you’re trying to write. CSGs generally take a really long time to put together due to their length and can lead to burn out. But on the other hand, working on more than one will make it even longer to complete.
I do find it hard to only work on a single project long term. Sometimes I get stuck on the main project somewhere or just distracted by wanting to do something different. The “best” solution I’ve found for me is to do some mini projects on the side from time to time (comp/jam entries for example) that gives your imagination the break you need without turning into another large project. It does take a measure of self control though as small projects can easily become larger ones. (I’ve gone back to improve/fix some of my smaller itch games while keeping them smal,l and while for some I’ve just done just that, others have become full sized projects that are taking a lot more time than planned to have completed. So yeah, careful about that…)
What I don’t recommend is working on more than 2 projects at a time ideally (and ideally have one big, one smaller if doing that.) Two large main projects is hard. You can prioritise one and switch if you get writer’s block etc but remember it will add to the time of completion of both and increase the chances of neither being completed. You might get away with it is they’re “shorter” CSGs, but trying that on one to the “epically long” ones so much more common these days is going to be harder for many to manage. Also try not to let it get beyond two in progress games at a time however tempting it is. it’s just too easy to let WIP’s multiply out when you have a great idea and just want to write some of it down and then before you know it you’ve got several partially finished games all of which you’d like to see completed. It really is easy to start too many games to be manageable even when you don’t mean to.
I did unfortunately start too many WIP projects (and some of these are over 100k in length so not tiny demos and have had a lot of work put into them) and recently I’ve been trying to be really strict with myself and not start any more large projects so I can work through my list of unfinished ones and get them done. (I’ve been pretty good, the only “new” game I’ve started in the last 6 month was a speed written ectocomp one. So far so good, but my recommendation is not to get yourself in that situation where you have too much writing to do in the time you have to get a game completed to start with 
)
One week into March, and I am beginning the layout and composition work on my stat pages.
Here is a screen of my first stat-page, called: The Essentials
Once I get everything picture perfect, I’ll work on what will be shown and when. For example, a nickname won’t show up until/if a nickname is chosen or given.
I hope everyone’s second week is off to a good start.
Looks great–love the header image!
Ooh that really does look nice.
This week has been a bit of a funny one. A lot of life admin stuff coming up, plus some medical stuff, plus the Honor Bound update bringing up a lot of (very necessary and appreciated!) bug reports meant that it was hard to get fully in the zone in the way that I prefer when drafting. Still, I’m getting towards the home stretch of Chapter 9 and should have it drafted next week, I hope.
After shilly-shallying about an outline for some time for various reasons, Fay and I realised what one of the blockers on it was - there is something very cathartic about realising that a big change is needed and noticing all the ways in which that change will improve everything. So that feels much better already.
@izzily congratulations on the wedding! I hope you had a lovely day!
@Eiwynn that looks really great!
About writing two games at once: I wrote some of mid- late Royal Affairs and Noblesse Oblige at the same time. It worked best when I split my time formally, so “this is a Royal Affairs month, next month is Noblesse Oblige”. If something came up in my mind about the project I wasn’t officially working on that month, I made a note and put it aside. That was how I could get in a good flow - which is how I work best rather than quicker/shorter bursts on each thing. It doesn’t have to be a month - it could be “this is a Project 1 day” - but I find setting apart the time is very useful.
By the way, if anyone is in the market for a F/NB romantic suspense book about an art gallery owner who hires an assassin against her abusive husband, but doesn’t know he’s also hired them against her too, Love Kills Twice by Rien Gray is an excellent time. The author also made If It Please the Court from Heart’s Choice. It’s a really good book and I’m looking forward to reading the other three in the series! Reading is great in its own right but I also find it enriches my writing experience too.
This sounds amazing. I’ve been fantasizing about having a “reading week” when I finish my game - I’ll add this to my list for that holiday. And wishing you well with the medical things.
From the beginning of my story I’ve mentioned a neighborhood dog, but I don’t think it’s been in any scenes yet. I think this week I’ll have to look up dogs in the ancient world – although it would be funny for this fantastical setting to suddenly have a Boston Terrier with no explanation.
Anyway, the recent Windows font change has me wondering – if I went into Microsoft Word → insert → symbol → more symbols, the font would say ‘normal text’, and there under the subset miscellaneous symbols I could find a smiley face with the character code 263A. If I change the font to Georgia or Cambria, the smiley face is no longer there – yet the smiley Unicode (and others, like the block drawings) has appeared as it should in dashingdon, CSIDE, playtesting in Firefox, etc. this entire time. Does this mean that such Unicode would still show up properly in a released game, or would it be buggy like the caron in Georgia font?
Edit: I’ve thought of a Plan B and C in case it doesn’t work, but upon further testing I noticed that while the smiley shows up in all testing as stated above, trying the ǒ in a firefox playtest has it show up properly, while in CSIDE it does not. Hopefully this might be a sign the unicode I want to use will show anyway. 
My goal is… to keep the scene I’m working on under control! Flavor texts are evolving into mini paths, and my eyes are starting to roll into the back of my head because of how cluttered my mind map is looking right now. 
How do you keep yourself from being overwhelmed? Branching is fun as heck that I lose track sometimes. I do have an outline. But it’s more like a brief summary of each chapter, then I pants my way through the details with a general direction in mind… if that makes sense aha ?
Very likely that I won’t be able to finish Chapter 1 this month. Aside from this there’s still a lot of content left to write—which I’m super excited to get into!
