I’m writing a spinoff to my last game, Vampire House. I’ve been sharing development on Twitter for a little while, but I think I’ve got enough to show it off here now.
You play a teenager in the city of Windbrooke at the beginning of a riot. As an unknown supernatural force plagues the town, you must work with a set of new friends to find out what’s happening and stop it.
…
So, it’s been a while, huh? I ended up falling out of here for a while, but I’ve been moving at a pretty good clip with this story. If I can maintain my current pace, I believe I’ll be finished with this story in three-to-four months.
The stakes ended up being a lot higher this time around, and I’m hopeful I’ve learned from my mistakes with the last gamebook. Also, I actually have an artist to commission for a cover this time around, we ended up becoming Twitter friends, which is cool.
Also, this is just a working title. I kinda like it, but I’m not sure if I’ll stick with it or not.
Thanks for reading my post, and I hope you like what’s written so far. Have a nice day!
I liked the design ‘feel’ of Vampire House, but I’d always felt like it was too short, like finally starting dating someone would have been the middle of the book rather than the end… but I suppose it was a matter of total words with the various routes. I guess this isn’t quite a sequel, but I’m still happy in seeing some more of your style of writing. : ) I’ll give this a read soon. Is it alright to ask about how far through you are so far by way of percentage you expect the whole story to be?
In terms of percentage… honestly I couldn’t even guess. It’s so hard to judge how long some sections will be. My last update on twitter added a scenario where the game temporarily splits into 3 separate routes before reuniting again (which is the version I just put on here).
When I was writing these, I was thinking to myself, “Alright, so we’ll have a nice little diversion to get to know each character a little better. Probably will be 1000-2000 words each.”
And those first two paths were indeed… about 1500 words each.
The third one wound up being 6000+
I don’t even know how that happened. It was a random spark of unchecked ambition, and it’ll probably happen again. It doesn’t help that a significant portion of my writing is improvised, so I don’t fully know what scenes are even coming, or what will happen in them.
Let the spinoffs fly! I once had a side section in one of my projects turn into a massive sprawl far beyond my expectations of it. It got to be a slog for me, eventually, writing it, but I think the story itself is more awesome for having it as a possible path to follow and everything it entails.
I just figured that when you figure you might know when you expect to be done you might know by how long you’ve already been writing how far through you are. If it blossoms beyond that, I’m all for it.
Had fun with the demo, here are a few bugs I found:
He looks at the stab wound at my side. “That looks bad… you should come with us. I’m getting us out of this war zone.”
If I choose to get bit by a vampire/werewolf, the game still treats me as if I got attacked by the mob instead. (does this mean we can be a vampire/werewolf? I noticed the Race: Human on the stats screen…)
'If you want, we’re having a sword sparing session. ’
Should be sparring
‘Where are you exactly?’ -User
says “User” instead of my name. I guess this might be intentional but I think using my name would be better, or something like “Me” which sounds more natural
I know how to use a sword, but its not the only think I could learn.
should be thing
red and brown carpets. Stylish lighting. Some sort of drink kiosks are set up. They actually look pretty fancy.
red isn’t capitalised
Wouldn’t it be better to use a stats bar to represent things like health, will and XP? It would certainly look cleaner.
And I apologise if this is off-topic, but are you still planning a sequel for Vampire House? I really enjoyed it, I think you nailed the romance but it was disappointing that it ended so soon.
So when i went into the haze with my new partner, I faced a mob of monsters.
I killed them all, them apparently never noticing that they were going faster than high end items on black friday, and then the game acts like there’s still a mob. A mob of zero creatures.
I then rushed the mob of nonexistent creatures, where they then killed me, despite the handicap of not actually existing any more.
I wanted to experiment with an ASCII style bar, to see how people react to it. If enough people aren’t feeling it, I’ll switch over to the built in stats bar system.
I know people want that particular story to continue with those characters, but it feels like I made so many mistakes with how I handled that game and its characters. Specifically, I don’t think the story was very well written, and I don’t think those characters were really all that good.
Part of the reason I did a spin off was to use basically the same setting (monsters came out of hiding and live alongside humans.) while slash-and-burning the old story, and making a new, and hopefully, better one.
This is probably the wrong attitude for me to have. But I just don’t feel that proud of Vampire House.
Hm, I’ll have to look into it. As a slight spoiler, that fight is supposed to be unwinnable, though it certainly sounds like something went wrong.
Either it was a bug, or I underestimated how many a player could potentially kill.
Looks like you beat me to explaining it!
I’ll look into what went wrong with it.
Thanks for the feedback everyone! This’ll help me out a lot.
Well I presume at some point the monsters were supposed to notice I was killing them all and then charge me, but during the fight they just stood their like dodos waiting to go extinct.
It’s coming up soon. I want to wait for the transformation to kick in at an appropriately dramatic moment.
Thanks!
It’s working for me so far, but… I did recently get an email from them saying they’re ending the public folder in September. Not sure what that’ll mean for hosting.
Let the spinoffs fly! I once had a side section in one of my projects turn into a massive sprawl far beyond my expectations of it. It got to be a slog for me, eventually, writing it, but I think the story itself is more awesome for having it as a possible path to follow and everything it entails.
so there is plan b for yahs XD.