The First Writer’s Diary!
Welcome to my first “Writer’s Diary” for my WIP ChoiceScript game The People’s House! For anyone who may be new, The People’s House is a simulation game focused on your term as President of the United States – and all it entails. For more of an overview, see the first post on this thread here!
Before I get into the writing bit, a huge thank you. To think that in just a few weeks we’ve gone from just a concept to having a demo released that has 930 clicks, 3.3k views, 76 replies, and a total of 443 likes as of the time of posting this is absolutely incredible to me. Now, enough of me blabbing on!
Schedule Going Forward
Going forward, I’ve decided to do my best to send out regular updates to you all. I do my best to stay as active as I can on this thread – I read and like every post and do my best to respond to as many as possible, and hope to continue to do that as I write.
The purpose of these “Writer’s Diary” entries will be to update everyone on what I’ve done in the past week. These entries will, almost always, be released on a weekly basis (if I’m able to) and will contain new features, minimal spoilers, and any new information about updates coming to the demo.
As for updates to the demo, I really can’t assign a set timeframe for it. While the writing portion takes long enough, I have the additional struggle of going through and bug-testing it which can take days depending on how much new code I’ve worked on.
One last thing: as this first Writer’s Diary is only being posted three or four days after the release of the first demo, this will be a much shorter one. With that being said, let’s get on to the updates I have.
Writer’s Diary: May 20th, 2022
The biggest thing I’ve been working on the past two days has been a massive re-write of the Prologue and Chapter 1. Obviously, not everything has been changed, but I have added an additional 6,000 words worth of storyline to just the prologue. Here are a few of the features I’ve added so far:
- The masses have persuaded me! All 50 states are now in the game for you to choose from. While I decided to keep the regions (Northeast, South, West, and the Pacific West) to make some math easier for me in the future, you now get to choose a specific state!
- More options for your character’s backstory. You will now be able to be commissioned as an officer in the military or to be a lawyer before you run for public office.
- An update to your character’s backstory. Now, as opposed to automatically being made a member of Congress, you instead run for State Senate and get to choose what you run for next; Mayor of a city (yes, the name of the city is unique to the State you pick at the beginning), Congress, Governor, or Attorney General of your state.
- The State and Party you select will also have a unique dialogue. Running for Governor of Idaho as a Democrat will result in a different story than running for Mayor.
- A more customizable family. Now, you’re able to pick the names, genders, and ages of your two children, with every option coming with unique scenes and interactions for you to discover.
- Started developing the outline for Chapters 2 and 3; Chapter 2 will be almost entirely focused on getting your legislation through Congress in the first 100 days, and Chapter 3 will see you shift your focus to issues abroad with Midterm Elections
- Fixed a few (embarrassing) typos
Progress Update: 15% → 17%
Mostly just additions made to the Prologue and Chapter 1, but I have done a lot of helpful work in outlining future chapters.
I likely will be releasing an updated demo of the Prologue and Chapter 1 in the next few days. It’s almost entirely written by now, I just need to go through and hammer out some bugs in the coding before I feel comfortable enough to upload it. Future demos will be released much less frequently but this first update is just a re-write which is why it’ll be out so quickly!
Updated Word Count: 26,000 words