Update 06.04.23 ~ About 15k Words Added
Okay, so I strangely had a lot more time than I thought I would to write out this next chapter, which is weird because I’ve been doing a lot with just life in general. I wasn’t expecting to get much done, as there were some slight coding algorithms I was trying to figure out, but after waking up early with solutions for the past few days, I got it figured out.
Anyways, new chapter! I don’t want to spoil too much, but depending on what you decide, you’ll find yourself ending the chapter differently than others 
About 15k words were added, with far less code than the first couple of chapters (I can’t tell you guys how many variables took up the word count in the setup), so you should be seeing a little more content than the first chapter.
Oh, but I do want to warn you guys, you’ll be getting a little bit of info on the MC and their grief. Remember, their mom was murdered years ago - it wasn’t at all pretty. So you will be getting a couple of clips on that, too.
Major Points:
→ Find out about the recent murder
→ Decide how to break the news to Tommy/Tally
→ Figure out how to deal with resurfacing thoughts
For those of you curious about some of the paths and don’t mind taking the edge of surprise out of the equation, you can . . .
→ Help save a man from hypothermia
- Note, for this scene, I spent HOURS doing a good amount of research to make this as realistic as possible. Google wasn’t very forthtelling, so I had to make do with the information I could gather. I would hate for an important scene like this to be completely butchered because of my ignorance, so if you’ve been in that situation before, let me know if there’s some inaccurate info in there! (and I’m so sorry that’s happened to you! I’ve been stuck outside in the cold before, so I can’t imagine how much worse that would have been if it escalated to something like this >.<)
→ Run after Toln in the middle of a snowstorm (Hint: Timing will affect the outcome!)
→ Prepare to share a meal with Toln and Tommy/Tally, and figure out how to best break the news to your sibling
→ Briefly come across a stranger in the middle of a storm
Tess is briefly introduced, and depending on how you go about things, you may even get to meet Ranger! More scenes on each of them will be in the next chapter, though.
The next chapter will vary depending on where you left off! I’m not expecting to be done with it in a week or two, unlike this one lol.
For questions about a save system:
Honestly, I’ve been thinking about implementing a save system of my own at some point. Knowing how different this story can come out, I want to give readers the option to do things differently throughout the story so that they’re not restarting from scratch. Also, I’ve done some digging on the save system from dashingdon and it looks like if I do that, I’ll have to comment the input out every time I test it (I use randomtesting a lot to shift through code-breaking bugs). I’m still researching this and planning through it, but at the very least I’ll put in some sort of character creation section where you can choose which chapter to jump to and, depending on the chapter, you’ll get prompted for the major decisions that led you there so that you won’t have to go through each choice when there’s an update.
In the meantime, I apologize for the inconvenience!
Bug Notices
In this chapter, there are a few different ways for it to end before moving onto the next chapter. I’ve test-run (test-runned? Test-ran?) it a few times and had my younger sister play through it and it all looks fine so far, so fingers crossed! It’s about 15k words without much code, so if you find anything that doesn’t look quite right, please feel free to let me know!
I’m trying to flush out bugs where I can, but it’s possible I’ve still missed a few as far as grammar goes. I am a firm believer that you can’t depend solely on yourself when it comes to editing stuff like that, as the human brain has the tendency to fill in gaps without you noticing (for me, at least). So, if you could kindly screenshot any mistakes you find and let me know, I would greatly appreciate it!
Important Note for Personality/Early Chapter Updates
I’ve also added a couple choices at the beginning to help implement protective-MC-behavior in concern to the sibling after a couple of y’all mentioned it. I didn’t realize I had missed those, to be honest! If there’s a part in the story where there’s not a choice that would fit your MC’s personality, don’t feel bad for letting me know! I’m generally more of an introverted peacekeeper kind of person with a bit of a sarcastic streak at times, and so while I do strive to keep the various personalities out there in mind, it is fully possible that I might miss some of the more aggressive/impulsive traits in minor scenarios.
I will like to say, however, for those of y’all that want to jump right in to burning the world, be patient You’re a 25-year-old young adult who’s been taking care of your sibling for the past seven, almost eight years. You can give people the cold shoulder and be distant, of course, but as far as harming/killing/leaving people to die for absolutely zero reason . . . that will come 
Also, I’m still trying to figure out the best way to show the stats screen. Don’t worry too much about it for now; just know that this game is going to be more choice-personality-based than stat-based. As I continue to write out these scenes, I’ll get a better idea - my vision is to portray it kind of as a file, as if you’re reading through notes in the MC’s journal/diary/brain.
Edit: There was a bug on line 852 in Chapter 2 that is now fixed! If you receive an error concerning that line and clicked on the demo link before around 4pm CT (USA), try refreshing/going through the link again. It should be fixed
