Regrets of the Traitor (WIP) (Updated: 25/05/2020)

Okay, so I’ve been working on this for a few weeks now (well, technically quite a while longer than that but that’s a different matter entirely) and I’m finally fed up enough with it to post a demo and some basic info if everyone would like that. I also have a few questions to ask.

Synopsis

You’ve killed the Queens, banished their son, and betrayed all those who thought they could trust you. And for what, power? Safety? Parental issues? Maybe. But now you have a kingdom and very few allies to draw from, and to make matters worse a strange figure is appearing in your dreams foretelling of something that is coming. Oh well, at least you have an aspiring necromancer, a sadistic warlord, and a naive apprentice at your disposal. And when the time comes, perhaps past actions will be the least of your worries.

The demo is currently around 123k words.

I’ve always been interested in playing the villain, especially in a fantasy setting, I’ve just never been able to make my mind up about whether or not I’d like said villain to be redeemed. So now I can kill two birds with one stone haha!

Anyway, here is some information I will willingly give about the game, and hints at some I’d prefer to keep close to my chest.

Features
  • You will be able to play as male, female, or non-binary, with the option to be trans.
  • You can be gay, straight, bi, ace, or even aro, however, this will not lock you out of romances if you don’t want it to.
  • Play as a human, elf, half-elf, dwarf, or half-orc, but this does not give you more or less experience in any skill. It will, however, affect how some characters in the world perceive you.
  • You will be able to use an arrange of skills, unlocking more as the story progresses (because spoiler-related reasons).
  • You start out as mostly hated by the general world around you, with only three allies who aren’t necessarily steadfastly loyal to you.
  • There will be four ‘main’ routes depending on the faction you eventually choose to ally with. Yes, you can strike out on your own. However, these routes won’t be constrained by strict rules. You can determine your willingness to cooperate with each faction and either earn or loose the trust of it as you go.
  • That being said, you won’t necessarily make enemies of the factions you don’t choose to ally with. I’m not a monster.
  • There may or may not be meddlesome gods in the mix.

And now what I know some of you are waiting for (don’t deny it)

Romance

Yes, there is romance! I hate tacked on romances in video games (I’m looking at you mass effect Andromeda) and so my approach will probably be more on the slow burn side of things. As I am more partial to characters with set sexual orientations, most will be bisexual or pansexual (I am making a distinction here) but there will be a few who are purely same-sex romances. And not just ones that show up close to the end and have no real importance.

This does not mean that romance is a key focus in the story, they are merely an extra for those that want to see it.

Now for some of the options!
Spotter: Your kind young apprentice who seems to believe you’re well-meaning. You don’t know where in their head they got that idea, but you suppose it will have to do. After all, they seem to be the only well-meaning ally you have. And that kind of innocence is easy to exploit.

Herron: A grumpy young mage who doubles as your part-time healer. He doesn’t seem to have any reasons to be working for you past an obsession to proving necromancy is possible, though he hasn’t proven very successful yet. Oh well, so long as he keeps patching you up, you’ll feed whatever fantasy he desires. For now.

Severa: A foreign warlord from one of the neighbouring kingdoms. Severa is a foul-mouthed warrior who speaks when and how she wants, and can probably toss the majority of your enemies on their asses any day. She is competitive to a fault and takes pride in her work as your self-appointed ‘interrogator.’ She’s made it quite clear that as soon as she feels the tides turning for you, she’d happily slit your throat while you sleep.

There are more, trust me there are more, however, these are the only three who I can release without giving away some spoilers. I’ve elected to announce the rest as they appear.

Demo: https://dashingdon.com/go/3125
I now have a tumblr for the game!: https://regrets-of-the-traitor-game.tumblr.com/
This is primarily to keep everything in order and kept neat. It will be where worldbuilding and potentially spoiler territory is trodden into, as it gives me a place to actually put everything and I figured, hey, why not?

Any feedback is appreciated and welcome! Have a good day!

Update Log
25/05/2020
  • Half (or more? I can’t say for sure how long the next part will be) of chapter four is out. Most of that half is finished but there’s a certain scene still missing
  • Changed the stats screen around and added info on said stats.
  • Various typos and grammar issues fixed
  • Some scenes/choices changed, but only to a minor degree.
10/02/2020
  • Added information to the glossary – primarily about the gods and some other little bits
  • The text for choosing to be a transitioned trans person has changed – I wasn’t happy with it the first time and I finally got around to it.
  • General typo fixes, etc
  • MC will now get to define their sexual and romantic orientation – this does not explicitly lock anyone out of any romances, it will just stop characters MC isn’t interested in from flirting with them unprompted.
  • Once you have a name and gender chosen, the stats screen will have changed a little
  • Forgot to mention that chapter three is complete, for those who are actually keeping up these updates
28/08/2019

Finally another update and with that we finally finish chapter two. Next will be an Intermission but that’s for another time.

  • Chapter 2 is now complete, bringing the total word count to 68K.
  • You will now get to interrogate Arke and bring either Severa, Spotter, or Herron along with you. (Or go alone)

I plan to fix grammar in the future but for now that isn’t my main focus. I will also flesh out some aspects of the interrogation scene for later.

27/05/2019
  • Some typos and code has been added but it’s not enough to really make mention.
  • A glossary has been added, however, there isn’t anything there at the moment so it isn’t fully implemented yet.
  • You can read through half of chapter two; Flirt a little bit, feel bad about yourself, make a group of enchanters angry, the choice is up to you.
28/01/2019
  • Chapter one is complete for the most part save some editing and additions I still want to do. You can play through the entire chapter and there won’t be anything you’ll particularly miss if I do add anything.
12/11/2018
  • There is now a save function in the game!
21/09/18

What’s new?

  • Taken out the fake choice in the dream sequence.
  • Made some small changes to the dialogue in the dream sequence.
  • Added character customisation scene.
    What’s next?
  • The next scene, where you meet some new characters, though the order will change depending on a choice you make.
  • Fixing up any typos I or you find, and fixing any clunky dialogue or writing done on my part.
  • Still rewriting the prologue. Help.
08/09/18

What is new:

  • I have fixed up some typos and formatting. So all the [i/]'s that show up when choosing the floating being should work properly and not show up.
    *I have added sparse amounts of information throughout the prologue, but none of that is overly important.
  • I have added the choice to skip to the first choice in the prologue.
  • There is a bit more to the story, but some branches haven’t been fixed yet.
    *I have taken out the Introvert/Extrovert stats. In the context of the story, I didn’t think it made sense.
    What I am Working on:
  • Rewriting the prologue. As Drago303 has pointed out, it isn’t very engaging it its current iteration and I realised it would be faster to rewrite it now that wait to finish the first chapter.
  • That being said, when I am tired of rewrites, I am slowly working on the chapter 1 so everything is going along as planned.
606 Likes

Well I would like to say that I am already incredibly interested in this work in process. Such a fresh and innovative take of a seemingly similar tale. The MC, though we were given little time with them at the moment, was very compelling causing readers to ask questions about their motive and who they are and what were they like before. This helps the reader build a very creative narrative around the MC and I am very eager to learn more.

The other characters are also very interesting and I am very interested in learning whatever we can about them. The person we meet in our dream(I believe they were the spotter?) is already set to be my favorite and I adore them.

I wish I could help with the other questions but due to my lack of experience with CoG coding system, I can’t accurately help. As for the tumblr, I would like to say that I personally enjoy seeing this on a site that is a little more conducive to interaction. I know a lot of other authors have been getting into the habit of creating tumblr accounts lately and while I enjoy them and think they are a good chance to garner more feedback and perhaps inspiration–not to mention fostering the growth of the fan base. However I would caution this because I am familiar with how tumblr can be quite volatile and a little more than intrusive at times especially when it comes to people or projects that put themselves out there and the less polite feel entitled to the person/project’s time.

All in all I think this is a very ambitious and interesting wip that I would absolutely love to see completed. I wish you good luck with your writing and coding (and I will promise to get better at art to make fan art!) ^^

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It was a really interesting read, can’t wait to see where it goes ^^

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I’d say one thing that annoyed me minutely was the stats screen and how it was set up.
Good rule of thumb: When it comes to UI, the less clicks, the better.

Other than that, it’s a perfectly servicable opening segment that sets everything up quickly and efficiently, conveying all the information needed to understand the setting.

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I always love a option to just lone wolf it.

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Will be reading over this in a bit, just wanted to mention that No More Heroes is the name of a pretty popular Wii game series.

Nothing wrong with that tho, just something I found interesting and thought I’d point out in case you were aiming for a release with Choice of.

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Concept is very much interesting. Always wanted to play as a usurper villain mage. All cliche aplly. :smiling_imp: :sweat_smile:
I can’t tell what I like or not and why, there no so much of a game yet. But I definitely will watch for this WIP.

Small typo

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I’m fine with it. Life of a Wizard by Lucid did it this way, just beacuse there were SO MANY stats.

If NM Heroes has a similar amount, I wouldn’t mind it. Makes things more organised than one giant menu you gotta scroll through.

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Are some of the people from the dream ros? Some of them fit with the description

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Done with a playthrough, pretty fun!

Spoilers ahead.

I have to say, I found it weird the queens let a bunch of adventurers covered in blood walk right up to them while armed with rapiers and crossbows, with not a guard in sight. They might get hurt! Which, err, they actually seem to have. For the first couple of pages I just thought it was silly, but when our first choice comes up, it’s a nice feeling of “I knew it!”

I know you can’t change this and keep the same plot going, and weapons are a pretty nice way of characterising your characters, so I’d say this little bit of suspension of disbelief is a-o-kay.

I would recommend one thing for this prolouge tho: mention how many heroes are in front of the throne early on. It made the scene hard to visualise not knowing if there were 4 or 5 or 12 or however many bodies standing there center stage.

Another nitpicky thing: would you mind explaining your idea for how you’re going to be using the personality traits? There’s a lot of them, and I’m not really sure how you’re going to make them all meaningful when you also have actual skills like Bladeswork and Swordsmanship. Are they going to be straight up checks? Are they going to dictate what choices you can pick from in the first place? Or maybe will they be altering dialouge? I would consider cutting one or two, but it’s still maybe too early for that.

Speaking off, I think Swordsmanship and Bladesmanship are a bit too similar sounding, but I get you’re making a distinction between warrior and rouge melee options.

I’m assuming when we’re waking up in the last scene, it’s the same character who killed the queens? And that it’s taking place after the whole incident? That’s probably my major gripe right now, being confsued, lol, but I’m sure you’ll adress it later on in the chapter.

EDIT 2: Seems it is indeed the killer, judging by the drop down synopsis I missed. Oops. I would still argue you should try to make this clear in the actual text too, not just rely on an external synopsis or blurb. But, like I said, I’m sure the way you’re revealing info is intentional, and that I’ll get my explenation later in the chapter.

And I’m very interested in learning more about the weird mentor character in our dreams (the Green Knight in my case, to be specific). Everyone else less so, on account of just not knowing enough about them. Well, dual queens sounded interesting, but for some reason I don’t see myself getting to know them better, lol.

Looking forward to more! Nice work. : P

EDIT: Forgot to mention, but I’d lose the “WhatHowHuh” choice. Missed opprotunity to affect stats, and I’m not keen on one of the reader’s first choices being an obvious fake.

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you might want to rename this

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also yes andromeda’s romance was shit. The ME trilogy’s romance wasn’t perfect (cough cough bioware’s treatment of tali in the 3rd game, though this is fixed with a mod.) it is at least more heartwarming than whatever the hell is going on in that other galaxy.

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Sorry but Severa’s reminding of a certain gal from fire emblem. :wink:
Interesting premise too! Definitely keeping an eye on this.

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Awesome idea! Loved it so far and will definitely watch this. Looking forward to seeing this develop!

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We don’t talk about her lol

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Intriguing premise. Good luck with writing, I hope you would be able to finish this work.

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Im looking forward to this ones future.

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image

How much are those personality stats going to affect us?

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Thank you everybody for your feedback, I will endeavour to remedy these gripes in coming updates.

Trust me, I know this on a first-hand basis. I’m still considering the option at the moment, and weighing up pros and cons of making another blog for this. Something for the future for the moment, I suppose.

No, none of them are Spotter. These are characters who show up frequently, even if you don’t choose them. To say any more would give away a substantial amount of information that I’m not prepared to give just yet. May I ask, who did you choose? Because I’m kind of in love with them all just a little bit.

As of right now, I don’t intend to change it, however, this is not the final look of the stats screen. I do intend to change it at some point but it isn’t the primary focus right now. I just wanted to throw something together so it didnt show up with an error message when clicking the stats screen.

Well… crap. The title has sort of always been this since I first conceived the premise but I am completely willing to change it if it has different connotations. That’s… kind of funny actually.

I will promtly fix that, thank you very much.

Unfortunately no, as interesting as that might be, they serve as a choice for a very specific, and plot-related, reason. It isn’t all that hard to guess why they might not be ROs…

Ah, yes, good idea. Thank you for the suggestion.

Yes, they will not be checks as I think that would be rather unfair to make a personality stat be the difference between pass or fail. I just intend to differ some dialogue a little bit. As for the swordsmanship and bladework, yes, I agree, however I didn’t want that particular stat labelled “daggers” the whole way through. That annoyed me.

Perhaps in some flashbacks :wink:

Agreed. It was mostly put in there because I needed to get on to the rest of the story. I do intend to go back and change that but, again, it isn’t my highest piority at the moment.

We both know who this is and I am hating myself more and more for it. No, she wasn’t inspired by severa, as much as I love her, I really just liked the name and decided to steal it. :wink:

Thank you everybody for your feedback I will keep all of this in mind

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So I’m the evil conqueror who has already won their kingdom, and then forced into a position where I have to save my new domain? Love it.

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