Hi, great stuff so far but it ends after chapter 1 when I read through it & idk if I downloaded it incorrectly or something?
What specifically were you seeing at the end? I haven’t had that problem and it sounds like other people have been able to reach the later chapters, so I’m not sure what would be causing that.
So, additional update: you may be able to tell from the thread title that the game now has a new name, Specters of the Deep! As I initially mentioned, Hour of Need was always a working title - I think it was an okay fit for the original concept but didn’t do a great job of conveying what the game is actually like overall. So now we have a new title. With more ghosts in it.
I uploaded a new HTML file to reflect the title change, but nothing about the game has been edited except the title, so you probably don’t need to redownload it if you already have the last file. (That said, @Batman I still don’t know why the last one wasn’t working for you…but maybe this one will?)
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I’m sure this is a learning curve thing, trying to play on an iPad, download it and open it and I just get a page with a “menu” and a “stats” button, neither of which do anything. I read the link you sent but no help there either. Am I doing it wrong or is it for pc only?
The iPad version of Safari doesn’t support loading of local html files, sadly, but you can download Microsoft Edge and that will open it properly. Other browsers like Chrome or Firefox may also work for this, but I haven’t tried it in those.
From the screen that pops up when you try to open it, you use the little arrow box menu in the upper right, then select Edge from the list of apps to open it with. You may have to scroll sideways to find it.
As a note, this is an Apple issue with Safari, not a CoG thing
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Chrome works. I’ve played through three times in it.
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It sounds like the best thing to do for the moment if you’re on an iOS mobile device is to download a non-Safari browser, yeah. Sorry for the added step there!
We’re working on finding the best way to share game demos going forward, since sites like Dashingdon are hard for anyone to maintain, so this is a bit of a test case. If you have any other issues with the HTML file, let me know. (Possibly DM me or post in the thread I linked in the first post about exporting to HTML - ideally I’d like to keep this thread more focused on the game itself.)
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I downloaded the hpnl version but I can’t play it. Giving an undefined property error after making the choice.
What choice?
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Firstly, I can’t choose the fate of the woman who fights with us at the beginning. The truth is that I can’t play.
Why cant you play?
Yes, can you describe in more detail what’s happening when you try to play, or post a screenshot?
Regardless of exactly what’s happening, I’m not getting any problems that sound similar and it doesn’t sound like other people are either (though if you are, certainly let me know), so it might be just a one-off glitch - maybe try deleting the file and downloading it again?
I actually lol’d at how hilariously vague this is. I know you explained why you didn’t give more detail, but this on its own is gold.
“Who are they? Well, they are people who exist, so… That’s all, folks! Tune in next time.”
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Hi enjoyed the story so far but I’m either dumb or missing something because after ch4 ends I get this
The last thing I did was meet Cecilia under the sea, also had my suspicions about her from our interactions 
Is that from the Dashingdon version? That one would still end after chapter 4. If it’s the HTML file, it looks like you have the older one since the title is still Hour of Need - try downloading the more recent one linked in the first post where the title is Specters of the Deep and see if the same thing happens there. If it does, let me know.
In general, if you’re having issues with the HTML file, it might be easier if you can write into support@choiceofgames.com about them - there’s enough going on in this thread that it’s hard to follow up with everybody here.
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Can you write in to support@choiceofgames.com? I’m probably going to have to ask a few questions to figure out what might be causing this, and it’s hard to go back and forth like that in a forum thread. It also helps our team keep track of what’s going on, because we’re hoping to use this more widely as a game-sharing format and we need to know what the issues are. (You’ll still be talking to me, I’m the person who answers the support email.)
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We think we have a fix for the thing where the HTML file sometimes ends the game early! May be a bit before I can put up a new version, my availability’s going to be pretty off and on through the end of the year due to holiday stuff.
(The ending early thing was related to refreshing the browser, so if you play all in one go it should be fine. Not suggesting that as a permanent solution, I’ll get the fix up when I can!)
EDIT: Okay, I’ve now uploaded a new file with the fix! If there are any other issues, continue to let me know, but I may not always be able to respond right away for a bit, as I mentioned.
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We’re over 100 likes on the first post, which is exciting! Thanks to everyone who’s tried out the game so far.
In celebration, here’s some background worldbuilding information I have on the royal families of Galdrin and Vatrai. A few disclaimers:
- As the game is still in development, this is all subject to change.
- You’re under no obligation to consider anything not currently referenced in the game as canon. (That said, a decent amount of this is referenced in the game, though often in throwaway lines, future sections not currently posted, and/or sections you’re not guaranteed to see.)
- I’m using a year-numbering system in here because that makes relative dates much easier to discuss, but I’m undecided on if it’s the way people really count years in-world or not, and I have no current plans to reference year numbers in the game. In this system, the PC was born around 693, died in 729, and was resurrected in 979. (This also doesn’t align with real-world calendars and is not an indication of tech level - they’re a lot further along than Europe in the 900s.)
- There are spoilers in here for chapter 4 (as in, already covered in the currently-posted demo). Otherwise, there aren’t really spoilers in a story sense - there is information that hasn’t been referenced in the current demo and may be mentioned later on, but not in a plot-significant way.
- These are not completely filled-out family trees - there are likely additional children/siblings/spouses/etc that I haven’t expanded on. In particular, I mostly haven’t gone into marriages but many of these people probably were married. Not necessarily all of them, even the ones with children - Iris only has one legally-recognized parent and that’s not considered a problem in Galdrin. And marriages may have been between two or three, any gender combination. Adoption is legal and normal, as are any number of alternate ways of conceiving children if it’s not an option for the married partners.
Galdrin
The ruler when the PC was born, and the first one they later served, was Frederik, who was born in 660. Frederik had four children: Ragna (b. 684), Frank (b. 687), Inge (b. 691), and Misha (b. 695). I don’t know much about what became of Ragna’s younger siblings. There’s a decent possibility a number of them died in the war with Vatrai.
Frederik died in 720, and Ragna inherited the throne, the Eye of the Serpent, and the PC’s services. Ragna had five children: the twins Elias and Hanna (b. 705), Eva (b. 709), Irma (b. 711), and Otto (b. 713). Elias was the elder twin and the original heir to the throne, but he died in battle with Vatrai not long before the PC in 729 - this comes up a few times in-game. Hanna was the next heir, and she had a son, Elian, born between Elias’s death and the PC’s. (That’s who the PC is talking about when they briefly wonder if the current king is Ragna’s grandson after their resurrection.) However, both Hanna and Elian ultimately predeceased Ragna when they died of illness in 746.
Ragna died not long afterward in 748, and Eva came to the throne. This meant that Eva, who had not expected to rule, was the one on the throne when Vatrai fell in 749. She’d had little involvement in the war with Vatrai before and was largely following her mother’s preexisting strategies, and she was horrified by the catastrophe and sought to offer what aid she could.
Irma is another one I know very little about. Otto is the prince the PC famously rescued when he was kidnapped by Vatrai, which happened around 725 when he was 12 or so. The intent was to demand Galdrin’s Eye of the Serpent as ransom, but the PC got Otto back before things could progress too far. Otto kept to himself and had very little involvement in politics for the rest of his life, though he earned some renown as a naturalist - it’s possible to ask Alek about this in-game.
EDIT: One other thing I originally forgot: there’s one place where Cecilia can mention that two of Ragna’s grandchildren were named after the PC. I haven’t definitively worked out anything else about this, but Elias and Otto had no kids and Hanna only had the one, so presumably that was one of Eva’s (younger, since Cecilia also says they didn’t inherit) and one of Irma’s.
I haven’t really sketched out most of the next couple centuries, except that the Galdrian royal family dwindled significantly. The next ruler I’ve expanded on is King Frans, who was born in 875 and inherited the throne in 899. He was probably an only child, and he had two daughters, Valeriana (b. 895) and Isabel (b. 898). In the early years of his reign, Frans was seen as a tyrannical ruler, both in regard to general politics and his heavy-handed use of the Eye, leading to protests and demands for an establishment of a council to give the people more of a voice. In 923, one of these protests turned violent, and Princess Valeriana, a staunch defender of her father and the heir to the throne, was killed. This was the first of many bereavements for Frans, and in his grief, he ended up stepping back and allowing the creation of the council.
Princess Isabel had three children: Valerian (b. 917), Evelina (b. 919), and Amalia (b. 925). On her older sister’s death, Isabel became the new heir to the throne, a position that horrified her. She was particularly afraid of wielding the Eye and holding all the power of Galdrin within her mind. In 928, she fled Galdrin and was never seen on the island again. She was discovered on the continent of Haberna a few years later, but by then, she had already died.
Further tragedies befell the royal family in the next few decades. Princess Evelina died of illness as a teenager in 936. (She’s briefly referenced in the game in a portrait you can see at one point, painted a few years before then.) Prince Valerian, the heir in the wake of his mother’s disappearance and death, was popular and well-regarded, but he died suddenly in an accident in 946. (I haven’t decided on the details of this, but I think it genuinely was an accident and not an assassination attempt of some kind - likely a concussion or something along those lines.) This left 21-year-old Princess Amalia as yet another unexpected heir.
We’re getting into just before the time of the game now, with characters who are referenced and/or appear a lot more. Amalia was married to the human Elvar Vinter (b. 924), a castle wizard from a prominent political and magical family, and the dragon Horizon (b. 693, the same year as the PC). Aleksander was born in 950. King Frans died and Amalia inherited the throne from her grandfather the next year. Frey was born a couple years after that in 953. Elvar died of a sudden illness in 961, and Horizon vanished shortly afterward and has not been seen since. Iris was then born after Amalia’s relationship with Senna in 963, and Amalia herself died in mysterious circumstances in 978, a year before the (present-day) events of the game.
Vatrai
This will be briefer, because there are only a few people I know anything about before the entire royal family (and country) ceased to exist. You can also hear about some of this in chapters 4 and 5.
The queen of Vatrai when the PC was born was Dorothea (b. 643). She was married twice (I have no other details regarding her spouses) and had one child from each marriage: Karina (b. 673) and Kennet (b. 686). Princess Karina frequently clashed with her mother, and was ultimately disowned in 692 when she eloped with a common soldier, Laurence Anker (b. 673). (Laurence’s pronouns are they/them. Also, in general, a lot of these people’s pronouns are unspecified in my mind if I haven’t otherwise mentioned them.)
Karina and Laurence’s daughter Cecilia was born in 693. Both Karina and Laurence fought in the war with Galdrin, and Karina died in battle in 697. Laurence was wounded around the same time, and though they lived to return home, they never fully recovered, and ultimately died of illness exacerbated by their old injuries in 702. With nowhere else to go, 9-year-old Cecilia sought refuge with the royal family. Because of her prodigious magical talent, she was grudgingly accepted to train with the castle wizards, but it was made very clear to her that she was not to be considered a part of the royal family. Her heritage was not publicly known, though it was something of an open secret at the castle and among other prominent Vatraian families at the time.
Prince Kennet, Cecilia’s uncle, was seven years older than her and generally viewed her with resentment, because she would have been the heir if not for her mother’s disinheritance and because her magical skill clearly and vastly exceeded his own. (Most of the royals in both Galdrin and Vatrai have some terrestrial magical training, particularly those higher in the inheritance. Those who wield the Eye will take on its powers regardless of whether they’ve previously studied magic, though they’ll find it easier to control if they have.)
Dorothea died in 712, only a few years after Cecilia and the PC were granted the Eyes. Kennet came to the throne and ruled until Vatrai’s fall. He had three children: Heir Aran (b. 713), Prince Gerhard (b. 719), and Princess Isidora (b. 726). You can meet Aran’s ghost and learn a little about them on one path in chapter 5 - they were still a teenager when the PC died, but were a feared warrior and wizard throughout their life, well-prepared to inherit the Eye.
Ultimately, Aran inherited nothing, because all remaining members of the Vatraian royal family died when Vatrai fell in 749.
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Hi! Quick update: chapter 7 is finished and submitted to my editor. This is around when I’d usually post chapter 6, but I might hold off on that for a bit. Chapter 6 has some placeholder-y stuff that isn’t very relevant in chapter 7 but will be in chapter 8. My planning for chapter 8 will involve working out those details, and then I’d like to go back and edit the relevant parts of chapter 6 before posting. There’s also some personal-life stuff that means I probably won’t have as much time to work on the game over the next couple of weeks, so it may still be a bit before I get everything updated. But things are moving, and things are also getting longer. The current total word count of the game is around 450,000, and 115,000 of that is chapter 7 alone. (Stars Arisen has chapters that are longer than that. I’m still hoping not to go quite as long as Stars Arisen did in places, but we’ll see.)
If things take a while (or if I get bored), I do reserve the right to put up the current version of chapter 6 anyway. (It’s all coherent, not literal placeholder text, there are just some parts that I don’t think hold together as well as I’d like them to.) Or, if there’s something else about the game you’d be interested in more about, just let me know! (With the caveat that my availability might be up and down, as I mentioned.)
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