The Northern Passage (WIP)

Hosted Games Works In Progress
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Hello! This is the alpha demo for my project, The Northern Passage. In this story you play as a hunter, sent up north to investigate a series of missing people along the border and in the port cities of the Blackwater.

Working with your handler and partner, Lea, you will travel north and discover that things are far worse than you ever could have imagined, and that there is something powerful lurking out in the deep, dark sea…

What to expect from this story:

  • Horror. First and foremost this is a horror story. I do have all current necessary content warnings listed in the demo.
  • Heavily character driven. This story relies on character interactions!
  • Impactful choices….eventually.
  • Character customization – name, appearance, gender, weapon preference, even name your horse :relaxed:
  • ROs. Two gender selectable, one woman, and one non-binary.

What I’m working on now:
Currently, I’m plodding through Chapter 1. I’m kind of just rolling the dice with this, to be honest. I’ve had this story in a folder for a really long time, actually meant to be a d&d campaign with friends, but it’s never come to pass. So! I decided to try and share it this way. And this is literally the first draft – there are some scenes here that I’m still looking to change a bit to be honest. But I really wanted to push myself to share it rather than just holding onto it and re-editing it a million times and never getting anywhere.

I’m looking for any kind of feedback at the moment – pointing out grammar mistakes, coding errors, etc., does anything feel odd, strange sentences, etc. all that kind of stuff.

Current word count (Aug 3 2020): 25k~

:ocean: Now, here are the links:
Demo | Tumblr

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Error when trying to select white hair

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This seems pretty cool can’t wait to see what happens next

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This is very interesting. I’m not much into horror but I can’t wait to see what’s next.
Also when selecting hair color there’s a typical " It hides you face, your eyes and your hair, which is…" the you before face should be your.

Also right after you meet clementine and you choose whether to show that you’re a hunter or not. After I chose to show, Lea went from being a she to a he and then a couple paragraphs down back to a she. I did choose she/her for Lea at the beginning.

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thank you! should be fixed now

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ty and good eye on the pronouns! they all start to blend together after a while lol. should be good now!

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Oohh I am liking where this story is going, I love a bit of horror and the characters seem interesting. Lea seems like an ass so I’m definitely going to romance them.
Im looking forward to the rest of the story! Best of luck!

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I really can’t wait to see where this goes. Reminds me a lot of Witcher games so I’m digging with the utmost enthusiasm.

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Looks good so far!

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I love story it like best part feel like witcher on how people don’t trust unknown

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This is pretty entertaining, I like it :smiley:

Thoughts

I quite enjoyed the whole MC being an immigrant in a country that’s a hair away from getting into a war with their homeland. I like the npcs too, they are interesting.

A few things I noticed and I don’t know if they are there because this is the first draft or not: there isn’t a lot of moments to be active in the story. For example, in the combat with the wraith MC fights it on their own with no input from the player. Also, MC’s personality is a bit too fixed to allow a lot of role-playing. I wanted to play a silent Hunter that’s a bit of an ass, but my guy kept smiling and bantering and being a softie toward Clementine; it was a bit jarring :sweat_smile:

I think it would be cool to be able to be more against the idea of traveling to Blackwater. Someone on the forum once said that when you need something to happen because it’s part of the plot and can’t be changed, the best way to go about it is to ask the player how they feel about it, and I think that’s one of the best pieces of advice I’ve seen. So, instead of having MC being like, “Mh, yeah ok. You’re the boss, Lea.” you could have an option that’s like “I don’t want to go to Blackwater,” then have a back-and-forth with Lea, then have the text say that Lea is obviously going with or without you and you’ll have to indulge them this once (for whatever reason). Then ask the player how they feel about it; annoyed, neutral, disappointed.

I like how you’re communicating the lore; as somebody with the attention span of a poodle, I’m always happy when games don’t info-dump on me. I’m curious about the Hunters and their handlers and how they are treated by common folk, and I want to keep learning more, which isn’t something that happens all that often because, again, attention span of a poodle.

Nice demo, best of luck with it :relaxed:

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thank you so much for the feedback! that’s definitely something i want to work on with giving players more options, especially with the hunter’s personality. i will definitely keep ur thoughts in mind going forward!

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There’s a bug when selecting the option for breast surgery, “something something startup line 294 illegal to fall out of choice statement must goto or finish before end of indent”.

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thank you, should be working now :slight_smile:

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Wow good so far …a witcher feel and i love it. Being that i love horror and the witcher. Good luck with your writing can’t wait to see more😄 though with the fight maybe we play how we fight with our stats? Failed stat failed attack and a higher stat an successful attack? Like im a mage so i could use magic but not hand to hand

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thank you! stats at the moment are not true to what the end product will be, i need to work on that big time lol. i’m still figuring out how i want them to work but i’m definitely considering stat checks for combat & dialogue options !

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Was anyone else half expecting an option to name your horse roach?

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I agree with the above comments in that I like the way information is conveyed, both info about the setting and the Order as well as the combat; I was surprisingly immersed, especially at the beginning with the mirror nightmare and also when the MC delivered the killing blow to the wraith.

I do wish we had more personality-based choices, and maybe personality stats, but you seem to be working on that already. I liked being able to customize the particulars of the MC’s combat style. Overall, I really enjoy this so far!

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This grabbed my attention very well.
Any suggestion/complaint I’d have has already been said, but overall I’m just surprised that your first draft is this good.

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When the MC gets annoyed Lea to the point he , she or they want to kill Lea it will look like this in my mind the images from legend of the legendary heroes legend-of-the-legendary-heroes-13_11

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