The Haze Under Windbrooke

Alrighty, hey there folks! I missed my deadline… by a lot. But! That’s not because I haven’t been working. The story just had a lot more words left to go than I anticipated.

So I wanted to get some feedback. I’m working on a part of the story that has a lot of missing content. We’re at a part of the game where there’s a lot more going on in general, and the player has some liberty to decide what they want to do. Also, your past choices start affecting things.

As a consequence, I could release an update right now. there’s a lot more stuff to see… but a lot of that content is in an area of the gamebook that’s very incomplete.

So I think we have two options here.

Would you prefer that I wait to do in an update until this section of the gamebook is finished? It’ll be a while before there’s an update, and it’ll be the last before I write the bad endings and the epilogue arc leading up to the true ending.

It’ll likely be a month or two of waiting before you get to see this new content though.

Or… would you prefer I do an update sooner? The section is incomplete, but there’s plenty of new scenes to see.

Tell me what you think, and thanks for reading!

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Then Lets make a vote :smile:

  • update until the a part of the game where there’s a lot more going on in general, and the player has some liberty to decide what they want to do finished
  • update sooner

0 voters

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Woah! I didn’t even know you could do that!

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you can make a poll by clicking this little option icon (see the pict)

option icon

and choose “build poll”
build poll

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Good to know! I’ll definitely remember that in the future n_n

good game sir or ma;am

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Take your time now :slight_smile: beside

Rushing stuff = bad game
Slow/delayed stuff = good game

I also love this whole supernatural thingy and even better…A HIGH SCHOOL TEENAGE STORY :smile:

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I could’ve sworn I posted in this thread before. Oh well.

Anyway, it’d be better to take your time and just keep working on what you have for now. It’s bad practice to rush something out before it’s ready. Go with the flow~~

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Alrighty! looking the poll over, it’s pretty clear people would prefer the update when the current block of content is 100% finished. That’s still going to be a while yet, but it will be here within the next couple of months!

This thread’s probably going to be quiet for a while, but thank you to everyone for your feedback n_n

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@OdicHastings: Is this a new thread? I guess it’s quite easy to miss…

Typos + comments:

pressing my palm against the wound, I wince. Hopefully I haven’t lost that much blood.

Should be “Pressing” (capital “P”).

I used to know this city. I knew it’s many streets like the back of my hand. But now…

Should be “its” (no apostrophe).

A truck pulls up in front of me. The front wind shield is shattered. Nearly half-a-dozen people are crouched in the back of it. Most of them look pretty banged up.

A truck slams on its brakes, screeching to a halt right beside me. The front windshield is shattered, and the frame is riddled with bullet-holes. People are huddled in the back, most of them look injured.

Both paragraphs basically say the same thing… :confused:

There’s my aunt Raven. She and my mom are inseparable. She lives above a shop she owns, where she makes and sells magical objects. I think some of her spells and items could treat me, and she’s much closer than my actual home.

As I think I pointed out in the last thread, if they’re inseparable, they shouldn’t live so far apart. :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

I quickly thank the driver as I jump out of the truck.

I don’t think I should be jumping in my condition… :grimacing:

At least one-thousand dead.

Should be “one thousand” (no hyphen).

The area we live in was completely ravaged. The apartment we lived in is gone, burned to the ground.

I guess that should be “lived in”, too, although that’s already in the second sentence. Maybe that could become “Our apartment…”?

Raven says they’ll probably open again soon, but its alright if I stay here until we hear from my parents.

Should be “it’s” (with apostrophe).

I’ll be staying with Raven. I still don’t know what happened to my parents.

Is this really necessary? It’s basically just confirming the previous status quo. I guess it could be rephrased as “Since I still don’t know what happened to my parents, I’ll be staying with Raven for the time being.” As an aside, I note that you’re using a lot of very short pages, which makes it seem to me as though the story’s going very fast, which isn’t very good in what’s pretty much been a downtime chapter up 'til now.

I feel angry.

This might work better as a choice: I feel… angry, depressed, numb, etc.

An announcement is made.

When? Is this the day after the police interview or a month later? It’s hard to tell how much time has passed (especially since the only thing I’ve been told about the intervening time is that “I feel angry.”

I’ll Keep walking.

Should be “keep” (without capital).

His hair is a mess, with oily locks haphazardly draped across his face.

He has his back turned to me.

How can I see his face if he’s got his back turned to me? :confused:

I Approach the sphere.

Should be “approach”.

“Are you not effected by it?” I ask.

Should be “affected”.

“So, how do we ‘dive in’, as you put it.”

Should end in a question mark (“?”).

Dead ahead, through the thick haze, I make out several figures. They look the same as the one’s from school, though their clothing is more varied.

Should be “ones” (no apostrophe).

“Right,” Joan says. “Lets.”

Should be “let’s” (with apostrophe).

Maybe I should charge them?
How about I charge forward?
I’ve got it! I’ll charge them!

Well, I was actually thinking I could try to separate a couple from the horde and deal with them first, before continuing in the same manner… :roll_eyes:

“We’re in the closet.”

Joan raised a brow. “What do you mean ‘we’?”

Hey, it’s not my fault the game hasn’t asked me yet. :roll_eyes: At least two people, including my own aunt, have already assumed my sexuality…

At least he knew I was coming out.

Well, I guess now is as good a time as ever, right, Joan? :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

you think?” I ask. “You don’t know?”

Should be “You”.

The white board has a very crudely drawn image of Skylong Mall. There’s else drawn or written.

Should be: “There’s nothing else drawn or written,” or something similar.

“Mr. Barrow.”

Wasn’t he Mr Barlow earlier? :confused:

I’ll slash and stab!
I’ll fire an arrow!
I’ll close the gap between us!

I have to say that I’m not very fond of this style of fighting. CS is not a good medium for an RPG, and in my mind, battles work better when they’re completely prose, with multiple different options to take, based on things like the environment, and the enemy itself. In this case, I just have to keep choosing to attack (and occasionally back away), with pretty much the same text each time, which isn’t that fun to read.

When I look to the side, I see a very boyish young man smiling at me. He’s got the most perfect golden hair I’ve ever seen. It hands around his face in lengthy bangs.

Finally! A cute guy! :smile: Pity about the creepy cult… :grimacing:

Take the blessing of the heaves. It’s power will grow inside you.

Should that be “heavens”? And that’s “its” in the second sentence.


And that’s it. Overall it’s very good, but I have a couple of complaints:
Firstly, while the scenes themselves are good, timeskips feel very jagged and unnatural. Even simple “Next day” ones feel confusing. Maybe just beginning new scenes with “A few days after…” or “The next day…”

Second, as I mentioned above, I don’t like the fight system. It feels pretty boring when you basically have to repeat the same action again and again without any changes. I know that it’s more work to write everything out as prose, but I do think it’s worth it.

I’m also slightly worried by the idea that not all ROs will be available on every route, especially since I only seem to have two available (and one is a brainwashed cultist, and I haven’t met the other… :grimacing:) I don’t suppose it would be possible to have the ROs available on the other routes as well (especially given that we seem to be trying to prevent the coming war, rather than take part in it)? Also, will any of the male ROs be nearly as interesting as the tragically female Joan? :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

Anyway, that’s about it; good luck with the game. :smile:

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This, so far, is much better than Vampire house. Which is really saying something because I enjoyed Vampire house.

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Thanks for all the feedback! It’ll help me a lot!

I’m wondering now if I named Mr. Barrow, Mr Barlow, changed it, and then didn’t correct that one… Or maybe it was just a typo. That was so long ago I can’t remember anymore :confused:

As for being locked out of certain RO… I’m not sure. I WANT to have all the characters meet up and form into one group, but from the way the writing is going… it might be better to have you only get to know certain people during certain routes.

I was trying to puzzle out how to have everyone meet up, and I couldn’t find a single way that wasn’t painfully forced, and going to slow the pacing down to a crawl. If I only let you meet certain people on certain routes, then I can focus on fleshing your relationship with those characters out more. If I have everyone meet up… I have to somehow concentrate all that character development into a limited span of time.

The combat system is another thing I’m reflecting on. There was a desire there to make a more ‘gamified’ experience, so people could have a sense of progression with their characters, but… I really hate writing it. I promise you, if it’s boring for you to play through, it’s just as painful for me to write. It’s tedious, and it’s not interesting. And a massive amount of time is being sunk into just coding the damn thing and not the actual writing it contains.

I wanted to have a fail state, where you just totally screw up, as opposed to the ‘normal’ bad endings, where you trust the wrong person during the final choice. But, Choicescript just wasn’t made for something like that. And, honestly… even if it was… I’m only one person. I am trying to keep myself to a deadline (that I already missed), some of my writing decisions are based less around ‘can this be done’ and more ‘can I do this in a reasonable amount of time?’.

Like, I could probably find a way to have every character meet up into one big group, without it negatively affecting the pacing, and with it being really cool and better than them being stuck to their one little routes.

But it would require rewriting huge chunks of the story, as well as substantially increasing the amount I have left to write. And I’m also kind of bad at juggling a large number of characters at once anyway. I can’t just keep working on this for months and months and months trying to make it exactly the way I want it. I force myself to make concessions here or there with myself.

There’s a lot I still have to do. We’ll see how things shake out. I might be able to work out the issues of only getting to meet certain people by giving the player more choice in who they wind up shacking up with. (Though this creates problems with the cult, since they explicitly won’t want you around if you’re not human, and the priest can tell)

Thanks for your feedback! I hope I can get this thing shored up to an acceptable state as this goes along. n_n

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Well, my WiP does have a chance of death in any battle, not when the enemy whittles down your health (there is no health bar), but if you do something incredibly stupid (e.g. smashing the energy source of a plasma railgun). (But even in these cases, there is always the option to restart the battle.) I can’t help but feel that if it’s down to hitpoints, you won’t necessarily be punishing poor choices as you will bad stats (which always seems far more arbitrary).

As an aside, I would recommend not having bad endings either, and certainly not ones which are predicated on only a single choice. It sucks to go through an entire game, only to mess up at the last moment and get a “You failed; everyone died.” message.

Well, I guess we could “save” Toby from them… :thinking: And I’m assuming that a human MC will either be able to leave the cult or convince them to be less… “culty”, because those are certainly the two things my human MC would want to be doing. He does not want to stay there.

I think one of the problems is that we choose our species (and thus path) right at the start, long before we even meet Joan, let alone any of the non-lesbian ROs, and with the other ROs confined to the various routes, we almost have to know who we want to romance before starting. (Heck, I only chose human this playthrough because I saw in the comments that the werewolf guy was straight… :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye: ) I get that it’s probably too late to change anything much, but those are my thoughts anyway. Good luck with the game! :smile:

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Oh! I should probably clarify the bad endings. It isn’t just like… you die. I’m planning a decent sequence where you do end up beating certain bad guys, and you even save large numbers of people. And you survive.

It’s more of a bad ending in the sense that it wasn’t… optimal. A lot of people still died that could have otherwise lived, and you fail to recognize who the real villain was, meaning they get away with it. I’d like to write the bad ending in such a way that it isn’t apparent that you got a bad ending until you play through again, and get the good one.

Thanks for the lengthy responses! Hopefully I’ll have an update on this thing… eventually.

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Not boyfriends, right?

I would probably still advise not having it come down to a single choice, though, especially if it means that all previous choices are ignored.

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Your own people will be fine. The one’s you would have met in the other routes though… not so much.

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I loved vampire house and I love this

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Sorry everyone is disappointed in you. you didn’t even spell your name right.

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One thing that does bother me a little though is the main character. They feel very pigeonholed into being a slightly sarcastic but kinda go with the flow character. It makes it hard for me personally to create different characters that I can play in multiple playthroughs of the game.

Now, I’m not sure if you plan on adding more options later on or what. However, even the dialogue you have without choices feels very much like something one character would say but not another.

One easy example is, what if they agree with the people killing Mr. Barlow right away? What if your character thinks of that as justice? Or going the other way, what if they are immediately disgusted by it? What if they think that nothing condones violence on another living being? Or hell, what if they’re just racists like their family and don’t like seeing a human killed by monsters?

The story is really awesome and I’m gonna buy it no matter what. Still, I’d like to be able to improve it if I can. Sorry if I come off as too harsh or demanding, I can be really critical of games that are really great because I’m actively looking for flaws and sadly it’s the other way around with bad games where I try to find any and all redeeming qualities. I also apologize if someone has mentioned this before, I haven’t seen it.

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It’s alright, it’s always good to see feedback. It’s the sort of thing I’ll have to think about. To some extent, it’s just an issue of my own sensibilities. Generally, when a gamebook gives me the option of selecting my reactions, and another just has the character I’m controlling have certain reactions… I enjoy the latter more. I find it results in more focus, and in the former cases it usually lets me down at some point.

Some of these games try to let you have control of your reactions… but then the author accidentally(maybe) takes that control away at certain moments. (i.e. my character being angered by a situation I personally did not find angering, when previously I always had control of those reactions). It seems like this is usually done to make sure your character has the “right” reaction for the plot to progress a certain way, but… if I’m going to lose control of my character’s reactions during key plot moments, why bother giving me that control during the filler?

Admittedly, a lot of this just comes down to the fact that it’s impossible to give players the degree of control and freedom they want, and also have a decent, focused narrative. A lot of times in stories certain things just have to happen. It’s a pretty common issue with interactive fiction in general, and probably one we could start a whole lengthy thread on in these forums.

…Now that I think about it, there probably already has been one on this.

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