Chapter 5 is live. Total word count is 31,300 words. I’m hoping to add Chapter 6 by Sunday night.
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That’s an incredible pace! Kudos! 
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Thanks! It helps that I have stuff outlined. The plan is still to have the last chapter finished by Nov 30th and to submit it to HG in December. This way I feel like I’m accomplishing something as I outline new CCH stuff.
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Chapter 6 is live, adding about 6.5k words. Total story is up to 38K words. Your MC can earn up to 3 XP through this point.
Chapter 7 will include the first “Boss Battle” which I am excited to finish writing. I’m still aiming to finish Chapters 8 & 9 by Halloween, which should bring the story to over 50k words. I realize there is little to no following for this, but I’m content to use this as a developer’s diary of sorts.
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Will there be saves someway in the future? It looks interesting and fairly long, I’d like to replay and check scenes without having to replay the whole thing everytime.
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I haven’t used it before, but I think there’s a save plugin I can activate through dashingdon.com. I’ll do my best to include that when I upload Chapter 7 soon.
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So, played it few times. Not sure how high level my feedback would be but here it goes.
I like world building and lore, pacing and structure is fine too. Main character does feel interesting with own personality that we only move to certain topics, sass and egoism feel natural and fits neatly even if going full mercy and stuff.
I love the Feeder \ Hunter conflict. It’s bit on a nose, but at the same time handled pretty okay, with nuances and doesn’t feel too black and white. Would appreciate a bit more lore of the Open and why would prey birds move to the city where every week it can be hunted and killed.
Once again I’m weak af to ‘nice’ route - being benevolent with assumed superiority, not making your new assistant fly beside you, assuring you won’t eat her, it makes me feel warm and fuzzy. Also, I think that having our owl play the part of the prey to vultures is pretty clever way to give protag an avenue to feel how prey feels and in-game reason for feeder-rights advocating.
Characters are fun and feel alive. Sadly I’m bad with names, but new assistant is absolute cutie (who also scared of us and I want to protecc from everything because damn she’s so adorable) our hawk friend is great and pretty fun to talk with, crippled mini-owl works great to show that civilization does have it’s perks… and most others are fun too!
Sadly cannot say much about mechanics, picked easiest cuz I’m super dumb and just want to enjoy the story.
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This was fun!
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That sort of feedback is very helpful, so thanks for posting!
You’ll get a chance to explore the Open a bit in the story (in Chapter 7, actually), but most of the action will take place in the city. I’ll just do my best to convey how even more dangerous the Open is for most birds, where death can come any second of any day. There’s a lot more uncertainty out there, but also more freedom.
And if enjoy writing the ‘nicer’ scenes a lot. I wanted to leave it an open question as to whether your owl has always been so sassy and egotistical, or whether having no respect/friends/money has pushed them into using the sass as a defense mechanism in a “who needs friends, anyway?” sort of way.
Concordia is the hummingbird and Ayvex is the falcon and I am striving to make them as complex and alive as I can. This is the benefit of having a small cast of characters (at least as compared to CCH). And I totally added the difficulty levels because some people just want to enjoy a story with no stress, and others -want- to crunch the stats and all the stress that comes with that, so both playstyles are accomodated.
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Glad you enjoyed it! And welcome to the forums!
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For some reason I can’t shake the feeling we’ll see some perfect tsundere option sometime later. Where our owl saves Concordia in Balancing, only to go “I-its not like I l-like you or anything… you’re just decent assistant and finding new one would be a pain… sheesh…”.
Because some owl options that already exist have this tsun vibe. Sassy-egoistical-‘mercy’ does that lmao
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I’m trying to leave room in the relationships for them to be interpreted differently by players. With all the characters being so diverse in size and species, it will mostly come down to emotions. But since the events of the story unfold over just a week’s time, and they will be under constant stress/danger, relationships will grow slowly. If I ever get to do a part 2, there would be a definite possible new love interest introduced.
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This is a challenge, no matter the game – I pretty much always feel you do a good job of giving an acceptable range for us, both here and your CCH series.
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Chapter 7 is live! It’s funny I should use that word ‘live,’ as this is the first Chapter in which your little owl can perish!
Total story is up to 44,025 words, and I’m on pace to hit 100k at least, as the second half of the story will be a bit more robust, with more Testing Choices and Boss Battles now that most of the worldbuilding is accomplished. I’m striving to keep up a pretty quick pace, and November being NaNoWriMo should help me with focus and motivation.
I think it’s pretty clean, but feedback/bug-spotting/suggests are always welcome. I don’t plan to post again until I have both Chapters 8 and 9 ready and polished, because that will lead up to Boss Battle #2.
Oh, and I think I managed to add a save system as well. It seems to be there in Settings.
Happy early Halloween, everyone!
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Oh wow! I was pleasantly surpised that if I fail a check to get free Concordia helps me if I have high relationship with her. Amazing!
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You will find ways to “fall forward” even if you fail testing choices, and yes sometimes Conk will be the one who helps you move forward. But she can’t help/save you when it comes to Boss Battles.
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I just wrote what, imo, is the most romantic/intimate scene I’ve ever written, and it doesn’t even involve humans. Something is off with me.
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I put out a call on a different thread looking for an experienced map maker. Here’s the thread if anyone knows of any prospective candidates.
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This game is surprisingly awesome. The only issue I’m having is the fact that there is currently an error with the save system. Keep up the good work. Oh and another thing, I’m playing on the easy mode and I see that i’m supposed to have 5 strokes of Genius. When I use them, they don’t seem to deplete, so surely it must be a bug unless they are supposed to be infinite.
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