I am almost positive it makes sense to me and me alone. 
More importantly, I hope you are feeling better soon!
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To my considerable relief/disappointment, Craiyon thinks elbow-shaped pears are awfully ā¦ pear-shaped.
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Basically a non-update: Iām still working on the game, hoping to be done with C9 soon.
Because I added a chapter I hadnāt initially planned for, this oneās going to have a weird number of total chapters. After 9 is done, Iāll have one more nice, chunky, āslice-of-lifeā style chapter (c10) with NPC romancinā in it and other setting notes, and then a bigg boss chapter (c11) and Iāll likely put all the endings in a separate short chapter (c12) since that worked well in Bread Must Rise.
Still hoping to be done with the draft by my March 15th deadline!
If anyoneās played the demo recently, Iām always pleased to hear from folks. Otherwise, Iād assume beta testing will be happening sometime in the next few months. 
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All the more reason to add it.
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Gosh, almost been a month since my last post! (And, ugh, what a month, right?)
Been slower than I hoped, largely because of explodey dayjob things that fortunately (for me) donāt affect me much personally but that Iām involved in heavily because of my position on the faculty union.
Still writing, though! Chapter 9 is up to around 15k now. Iām thinking about whether I still need another slice of life chapter set in [spoilers, redacted!] or if it would be more satisfying to save that until after the final battle. (Iām leaning the second way, partly because of constraints on my writing time but also because I think another slow quiet chapter may sap some of the urgency I want players to feel as they approach the end of the game.)
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Without knowing what actually happens in the later chapters, I must say I rather like the idea of a slice-of-life denouement. Iād like to really feel the consequences of my actions, not just in the immediate aftermath or the broad details but what it really means for the charactersā lives.
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I think I agree with Aletheia. Like you say a slowdown might reduce the feeling of urgency before the climax, whereas a slowed-down aftermath could feel like a good rounding-off of things.
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Thank you both for the outside perspectives!
Coincidentally, Slice-of-life Denouement is the name of my new post-progressive-rock cozy fantasy mystery inspired cover band. 
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immediately becomes groupie
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I am entering the home stretch, just a little behind schedule!
This last week I was able to finally sit down and dig into chapter 10, which features the decisive battle (and yes thatās a FF6 reference).
My current plan is to finish that up by April 1st, finish my end-game epilogue (with bonus slice of life scenes and character relationship thingies as a reward if you end up in a āgood endingā track!) and then comb back through to hunt down any remaining to-do items in earlier chapters by the 15th.
Thatās a month after my actual deadline (sorry, @jasonstevanhill !) but, as the prophets say:
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Iām looking forward to getting to play the whole thing!
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Still moving forward on C10! Here are some (sadly) relevant memes.
(ETA: Chapter 10 is currently 12,000 words. 5,000 of that is a gosub where the player picks which NPC to take, with all the different permutations of whether they agree to go, refuse to go, or need to be convinced, and then the testing choice and outcomesā¦ lol)
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Itās advice well worth disregarding, if you understand exactly what youāre getting into and you have the writing/coding chops to make it work.
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Ohhhh this feels very familiar - but once itās done itāll be very flavourful and varied depending on what the player decides!
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I think it will make for a more engaging endgame and (honestly) other than this and a few other bits I think it is going to be fine, butā¦ I can definitely see why it is the advice handed out. lol
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Yeah, I can imagine a lot of novice IF writers underestimating the complexity involved and getting in over their heads. But I absolutely think it will make the game more engaging, and more replayable as well.
Iām definitely looking forward to trying it out!
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Closing in on the epilogue!
The āboss fightā kind of stuff in C10 is done and dusted and I also reintegrated the āShallowsā and āFleetā scenes (more or less) into the game, since I really did build them in with the idea that they would offer players help in the endgame in some instances.
Iāve still got to write in the āNPC and Chillā moment in early C10, but otherwise itās just āgood endingā denouement thatās left to go.
And, of course, some clean-up in the rest of the gameā¦
Feeling good I will be done somewhat soon, in any case. 
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Iām so excited!
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In important news that has nothing to do with it being April 1st (
) I am excited to announce that I have decided to rewrite Spire, Surge, and Sea from the ground up with one radical difference: instead of creating this game in choicescript, I will be producing it as an interactive mime-based project where players must correctly interpret my pantomime videos and respond accordingly.
This will be a challenge but I think youāll all agree it is one that needs to be doneāespecially given the state of our world today.
Look for more soon on the gameās Steam page!
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The inaugural release from their new imprint, Choice of Mimes.
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