The MC is also my favourite part of your game. It’s a nice change from the usual passive MCs in other games. For example, we would never get to actually beat up characters like Silas in most other games and just have to put up with their snark and bullying just to see their “character development”. I know it sounds petty but it’s just a pet peeve of mine, lol.
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So true. I cannot stress enough how much fun it was to be able to throw the first punch for a change.
I really hope we get to do that to more people in the future haha!
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For sure. Everyone afraid of him and we just laugh at him and beat him up XD
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Hi all,
Time for my usual fortnightly progress update. Hope that you’ve all been well!
- As mentioned last time, I started work on chapter 3, which is focused on the Pactbinder’s first term at Hightower, over the past two weeks. It will also be the penultimate chapter of ‘term 1’, so in a sense we’re closer to the end of Act 1 of the story than the start, which is strange to think about!
- This has also been a hugely challenging fortnight from a personal life perspective - nothing bad at all, just extremely busy at work, which has given me much less time and energy for writing than I would have liked.
- With all that said, I’m pleased to say that I’ve still made pretty good progress! I’ve written 18.1k words over the past two weeks, and I’m hoping to get that up to 19k by end of today. So I’m actually only a hair under my 10k a week writing target!
- It’s difficult to predict how long I’ll be busy at work, but right now given how the last two weeks have gone, I’m still feeling fairly good about the mid-May release date estimate for chapter 3 I shared a fortnight ago. I’ll let you guys know if that changes of course!
As always - feedback and thoughts always gratefully appreciated on the released content so far. Always keen to make Pactbinder better and your thoughts are an invaluable part of that.
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Love this WIP! It reminds me of Potter, minus the eldritch entity in your head, of course.
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Been a bit slow to respond to comments this past week or so because of the aforementioned work stuff, apologies!!
I’m still really glad that the Pactbinder seems to be working for people so far. Letting them be a proactive instigator of events (if they want to be!) was really important to the vibe I was trying to capture with them. And the C1 Silas fight (and the Phantom in C2, for Pactbinders who charged at them!) definitely won’t be the only fights they get to instigate…
Thanks so much! Really glad you’re enjoying the story so far.
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March 14th Update
Hi all,
How have you all been? This fortnight feels like it has passed by in a complete blur for me, it’s strange to think that it’s already time for my latest fortnightly update post.
- My personal life continues to be incredibly busy, but the good news is that I think I’m slowly adapting to the new normal. This has been good for my writing; I felt I was efficient before when it came to finding free time to write, but this last month really has been an exercise in finding ways to borrow spare minutes from crowded hours.
- The good news is that this has been surprisingly successful for me over the past fortnight; since my last update, Chapter 3’s word count has increased from ~19k at the start of the month to ~45k as of today.
- I’m really pleased about this, as it means that I’ve surpassed my usual 10k / week target average. More than that, it means that I have made up for being 1k under target last fortnight and then some! My draft of Pactbinder is now 213k words. That’s a wild feeling.
- Numbers are all well and good, but what does that mean from a progress perspective? Quite a lot! I’ve written two classes and all three school Society branches. In terms of remaining work; that means that I have a couple more class scenes to go, Halloween and a ‘Free Roaming’ section. As well as the scene transitions that connect those things, of course.
- My gut feeling is that I’m more than halfway through the chapter’s content and word count, but that’s subject to change - if I’m wrong it’ll be because I end up writing more for the Free Roaming section than I intended to…
- I do expect this chapter to require a lot of editing, though - I think the Society scenes are the longest ‘true’ branches that I’ve done so far, and they all contain their own choices and permutations that’ll need to be tested.
- With all this in mind, I’m feeling good about the mid-May release date estimate for chapter 3 I made at the start of the month for now. Of course, I’ll let you guys know if that changes.
As always - feedback and thoughts on the demo are gratefully appreciated. Always keen to make Pactbinder better; your thoughts and feelings are an invaluable part of that - and comments in general are always just hugely motivational!
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March 29th Progress Update
Hi all. Last progress update for the month below!
- Still busy - I’m finding that in these times my progress is really difficult to track per day, but somehow still averages out nicely over longer periods of time - I’m writing a great deal in short bursts, then going plenty of days without being able to write anything.
- Progress is decent and I’m still exceeding my 10k/week target wordcount, though; since the middle of the month, Chapter 3’s word count has increased from ~45k to ~68.5k as of today. That’s pretty cool and means that I’m probably going to hit 50k words written in March total! Only a few hundred words off…
- In terms of story progress, I’ve just finished my draft of the first ‘Free Roaming’ section where the Pactbinder gets to decide how they spend their free time outside of classes and Societies. Stat training, personal research, that sort of thing. And a couple of optional conversations with two of the Pactbinder’s collegemates; I’m taking inspiration from Dragon Age’ 's camp for these. I’ve had to learn a bit about ChoiceScript design to get this all structured - dreading the testing!
- Though there’s still plenty of work to do (two more class scenes, Halloween and something else) in terms of remaining scenes, it does feel like the path to the chapter’s conclusion is in sight now. After so much branching from the Societies and Free Roam, I’m really looking forward to moving on with the core plot…
- Still feeling good about the mid-May release date estimate for chapter 3. I’ll let you guys know if that changes; right now my gut feeling is that I’m going to make it with a couple of weeks to spare in terms of writing, but this might be a hard chapter to test and edit because of the Free Roaming section.
As always - feedback and thoughts on the demo are really appreciated.
Always keen to make Pactbinder better; your thoughts and feelings are an invaluable part of that - and comments in general are always just hugely motivational!
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This was a lovely read! I appreciate how you can make the MC as unhinged or as sympathetic as possible, it’s really great for roleplaying purposes, I thoroughly enjoy antagonising everyone that comes my way. Along with subsequently beating everything in combat and making people gape at me in awe (it does wonder for my ego).
Overall, I like the characters a lot. I especially like Eleanor, she’s very cute! I like how ROs could develop feelings for the MC instead of having the MC be the instigator for any romantic relationship. I’m gonna try and see if I can get the entire cast to fall in love with me 
Even with only 2 chapters out, the writings of the characters are solid and I can clearly visualise their character voice. The setting of the story is very interesting too, even though the MC might have the upper-hand over the other characters due to their pact, they’re effectively clueless about everything which I think make for a good conflict, and you don’t see a story where the MC make a deal with an eldritch god every day. I am also very curious about their circumstances, why were they chosen? Did the god chose anyone else? So many questions!
I do wonder with how conservative Hightower is, I wonder if nonbinary MCs will run into any trouble or get confronted about it?
That’s all of my thoughts, can’t wait to find more about the story!
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Hey - I just wanted to say thank you very much for this post. It was really kind and much appreciated, especially since I’ve been deep in writing mode this past weekend and that always makes me feel all kinds of strange about my own work so this was a relief to read!
Really glad that the characters, MC and setting are working well for you - those are really the cores of the story I feel so it’s always a great relief when I hear it’s landing with people and they’re excited to see how things turn out.
I do wonder with how conservative Hightower is, I wonder if nonbinary MCs will run into any trouble or get confronted about it?
I think about this question (and questions like it) a lot! There’s some subtle reactivity to it already in chapter 2 (around the player outfit stuff - it’s more or less overt depending on the branching you go down), and that kind of subtle stuff is likely to continue throughout the game as a bare minimum…
One of the big reasons I want to track stuff like player ethnic background (particularly in the context of ‘Britishness’), and faith, but that’s a bit different is that I’m interested in exploring that sort of intersectionality of identities the Pactbinder inherently has, and being nonbinary feeds nicely into that.
I wanted to play with the question not just of whether the Pactbinder can be accepted by Hightower, but also whether acceptance is desirable. So I don’t want to shy away from the society’s underlying flaws and prejudices, though I don’t want to moralize either. My goal is to present a flawed world with little editorial comment and let the Pactbinder make of it what they will.
Hopefully folks are kind enough to keep me honest with feedback as the story progresses as to whether that’s working, and / or where I need to do more or less…
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April 10th Progress Update
Hi all. Slightly early progress update as I may be tied up this weekend. Bit of a weird update as things over the last two weeks didn’t quite go as expected; C3 timelines have been impacted.
- Last time we caught up, about ten days ago, I’d just hit 68.5k words and was on track to have a draft of the chapter to be done by month end April, so I could spend two weeks editing and have it out for you in mid-May.
- Somewhat bafflingly, I appear to have written about 51.5k words in the last ten days. So, err, the chapter is now finished, and is 120k words long. So I have been made a liar in several ways - I said C3 would be shorter than C2, which hasn’t proved to be the case, and my target date of mid-May may also have been a bit off…
- I suspect Chapter 3 will be out mid to late April accordingly, depending on how editing goes. Last time editing took me about a week, but this chapter has a quite a bit of branching, so I’m assuming it will be trickier this time.
- Just to set expectations - I’ll share some word count analysis when the chapter officially drops, but I’m not expecting this chapter to feel like the game has almost doubled in size on a single playthrough despite the word count - between the player’s Society picks, the free roaming section (where you can choose how the Pactbinder spends their free time) and a big branching section near the end, there’s a lot of content you won’t see in a single playthrough…
Thanks and see you in a couple of weeks…
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I’m still weirdly confused by how it happened! Like 3-4 weeks ago I was stressed that work and IRL meant I’d miss the May target, but then this happened. I’m glad that I managed to get to the end, though; I have a feeling if I’d petered out before getting to the chapter’s end, the writing fatigue would have made getting that last 5% done really hard.
By the way, guys - a quick request. As I mentioned, my focus for the next couple of weeks is going to be primarily on polishing C3 so I can get it to you in an acceptable state, but that means I’m going to be doing a lot of editing work in general.
So if anything threw you off about the currently released demo - specific scenes, choices, writing, etc - now is a great time to let me know, either through a post on the thread, via DM or on tumblr if that’s preferable all work fine for me. I won’t’ be able to change everything (e.g. the opening stuff is always going to be rather slow burn), but to the extent that there’s a flaw that I can fix without cutting across the structure of the story, I’d love to know about it.
Always keen to work to make Pactbinder as good as it can be, and I can take a bit of constructive criticism in service to that.
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Holy shit amazing work, I’m shocked it’s gonna be out that soon, see you then, I hope.
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Hi guys.
Pleased to say that chapter 3 of Pactbinder is now live.
- Overall, the content added with this update is once again rather substantial, at ~124k words long total.
- Overall, word count is at around ~292k words (excluding menus and startup); I think the average playthrough is about 89k words, or ~30% of total word count.
- Outside of the content outlined below, I’ve further reworked the menu system to make it look a bit nicer as it accumulates information, plus added some title graphics for the book itself.
Some things to look out for in Chapter 3:
- Most of the Pactbinder’s first term, which includes a few classes including their first opportunities to practise magic.
- Signups for Societies!
- A Halloween party during which absolutely nothing goes wrong.
- The Pactbinder’s first chance to roam Hightower freely and pursue their own interests and curiosities!
- Seriously, nothing goes wrong. I swear.
I hope that you enjoy the release, and please don’t hesitate to let me know if you have any feedback or commentary; I’m making sure I have the time to spare over the next couple of days to review and action it!
As always, views on the game so far and comments are truly gratefully received. I’m especially interested to hear if the cast is still working for you, whether you enjoyed your choice of Society and Free Roaming options, and whether the pacing is maintaining your interest as we move towards the conclusion of Part 1 (not the book itself, for the avoidance of doubt - we have a long way to go for that…) I’d also love to hear about your Pactbinders, and whether there are any points where you feel the narration or the options available to you didn’t give you an option that worked for your character.
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Always feels good to have IF updates dropped on Friday evenings. I have never felt as grateful to my time zone as today.
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Yay. I’m glad your game has gained popularity on the subreddit too. I was flabbergasted when nobody seemed to mentioned it much so I even made a post about it, lol.
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Hope you enjoy it!
Thanks-I’m always tickled and really grateful when I see people mention it online, really appreciate you spreading the word.
Even the 4chan thread gives me a good laugh whenever they style on me honestly. Minor c3 spoiler: Stuff happens this chapter guys, I swear. Eventually
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I assume this is not meant be using Adelais name here
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Thanks and great catch! Appreciate you flagging. Should have been the MC’s name, used the wrong variable.
Making a note for the first post launch patch - I’ll probably drop it on the weekend once a few more bug reports have come in
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