The Summoner | Updated Nov. 26th, 2024 (217k words) | Kofi Demo 237k words

Hey all, in case u didn’t notice, I updated the main post w/ the cogdemos & itchio link!

Also eyyy here's Rei's designs

I said I didn’t like how I drew long haired Rei, but I actually don’t mind it anymore. Still drew an alternative to the hairstyle anyway bc we reached a kofi goal c:

I actually don’t see the outfit w/ the sun & everything as what f!Rei is wearing–but hey, I had fun(pain) drawing it lol



Besides all this, I don’t have much news on the writing :face_exhaling:

I’ve been progressing, but I’m nervous on how stable the plot is. I can’t tell if I’m satisfied with where I’m taking things just yet, I want it to feel fitting & interesting! (thank god I’m at least not stuck on possible paths I can take the story down, I was seriousllyyyy wondering if I even knew how to write/plot anymore lol)


Aww, I’m so happy you’re liking the story! And ahaha, past me reallyyy wanted the culty vibe to come through, so to hear this is awesome c:

I’m not exactly sure if I’m gonna lean full into that still but… it’s all a matter of perspective on what makes someone normal in Therra, isn’t it? Nah, no one’s normal lol

As an aside–I never knew the COG forum did this, but happy cake day, I think? There’s a cake in ur username?!

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I can only really comment on the matter of your plot’s stability from the perspective of a reader, but it seems plenty stable to me.

The outlining premise (that we know of here) is pretty clear-cut: the MC is in a life long predicament of being the next generation summoner of their family’s bloodline. If they resent this is up to the player, but whether they like it or not, they’ve been forcibly enlisted based solely on their attribute of being a summoner, and must now find a way to either cope, or become brave enough to escape their situation. While dealing with the brewing conflicts of powers that matter solely to those in power, the MC must do what it takes to survive.


If it takes the entire book to “escape” and go awol, then that’s entirely reasonable. I know my MC wants to, and would happily never summon again–no matter who commands him–if he could get away with it. Honor? What’s that? Not like there’s any sort of spell, or tool that can force a summoner to manifest their summons non-consensually. At least none that have been mentioned. But in the meanwhile, the army’s in the middle of nowhere, but would immediately spend resources to reclaim, and even imprison any MC bold enough to try leaving too early.

As much as you might be scrabbling with a touch of imposter syndrome, just know you’re doing fine as far as we’re concerned. You can steer this vehicle, even if it might buck your confidence now, and then. You’ve got a roadmap in mind, and can trust it to at least get you most of the way there. The last little bit is all you, and your ability to discern if there’s a tree in the way. You got this. :smile:

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Your reply was so thoughtful, thank you :face_holding_back_tears:

While I was more so thinking abt the future parts of the plot, this really helped a lot. It’s hard to see the writing w/o the lens of the writer where I get in my head abt every part that I think doesn’t fit enough, could make more sense, felt like I was writing with a broken lead pencil so I’m just staring at it & cringing, blablabla. So seriously, ty. I was thinking I had an awful amount to rewrite, but I’ve been rereading and I think I’m not as screwed as I thought lol

I’m glad to hear where I’ve been taking it isn’t coming off as contrived or delusional! Yet! If it is, you’re right! I will chainsaw the tree down!

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Haha oh yeah the cult like vibe definitely came through!! I’m just glad it was there and u wasn’t over thinking stuff :joy: and omg the cake was probably for my bday! My bday was the 23rd so thanks! I appreciate it :slight_smile:

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That bar scene, holy, that made me cringe so bad.

Hey guyyys, I’m in the process of writing & coding a Valentine’s short (bc how can I miss vday no way) in twine and u can see early access of the routes in my kofi if you’d like :blush: It’s non canon (or more like set in an alt universe), but sort of like an appetizer for how the real routes would prob go.

I’ve finished writing Jackal’s routes, workin on Caine & Rei’s–I hope to eventually have it public on Feb 13th! If I’m late oops.

Also got some writing/plotting done on TS, but nothing major to say else. Too raw to put anything into CScript yet.


Is that a good thing or bad thing lol–wait what bar scene

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I think they might be talking about when going to the town in that one sequence but not certain since i havent taken that path yet.

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Want to give appreciation to how well it seems the game tracks and acknowledges how my MC is. I’ve not had anything be out of character and not for lack of referencing their thoughts. It really feels very impressive, that consistently so much is acknowledged, reflected upon, different callbacks to specific moments or emotions, acknowledging changes in thought and giving explicit opportunities to reflect/change, etc. It feels very nice, having so much of the narration consistently being in character without just having to pick options for every little thing. It’s not something I see much at all, usually everything is fairly vague or only being from directly prior choices (like a page immediately after a choice following the chosen emotion/thought, but then back to neutral after they get the referential paragraph out of the way), so it stands out a lot to me.

Also glad I refound the story. It’s one that’s been in the back of my mind off and on but when going through the full list of stories on the “new” site I’ve rediscovered a lot I’ve been missing, this being one of them. Remember the initial release fairly vividly.

And since asked and I've now finished

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Is it called a bar or tavern not even sure when you get to the town and some random patron flirts with your summon honestly I just cringed so bad at the hole thing it made me want to just fall on my own sword.

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i was really surprised on how good the summoner is, usually i dont like games where personality are the only stats since most of the times they are just there unused, giving you the ilusion of choice (at this point i would rather read it as a novel than play it as a game) a sad display of wasted potential, or they are used on extremes forcing you to be the most asshole person that existed or the most asskisser, but not in this game.

here i felt i was really making my own choices and they were acknowledged/remembered, not just being handed whatever the author thought would be appropriate to x percentage of stats, another good surprise was relationship dynamics, loved the povs and the ro´s, for a game with only 217k word it felt much more longer and filled with content, it felt more complete than most wips i played, great work i really liked it.

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I found a bug in the CoG demo. During the festival, all choices of book in the bookshop lead to an error, unable to proceed.

Our apologies; there was a 500 error while loading game data. Please refresh your browser now; if that doesn’t work, please email support-game-id-3452-web@choiceofgames.com with details.

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The Day of Ardor story is now up on HBreaker Hub!

I was really wrestling with twine in between not having as much time to write it as I had liked lol. I gave myself a tight deadline :sweat_drops: Read here for some notes about the writing if you’d like, it’s a public kofi post c:

I hope you guys like the story, I quite liked writing some scenes in it even if I wished they had more baking time. I’d like to write more petting Rei’s wing, idk that was enjoyable.


Unfortunately(?) no alcoholism in that path ahah–but I did originally intend a bar/tavern scene with Jackal! There was gonna be drama because they could be against you when u confess something unwise, but scrapped :pensive:

Thank you for the stats!
And I’m so glad you think so! Since I recognize I currently lack some skills in particular writing aspects, I wanted to at least do this so TS had more to it than a surface level experience lol. It’s great to hear this detail was noticed because I had most of it buried in code you couldn’t see if I didn’t make it into a choice option (which worried me about the perceived interactive part in IF). I actually had converted some into choices since the updated demo, but I will def keep this in mind because I love that you enjoyed the effort that went into the “flavor text”.

Thanks for taking the time to write this, it means a lot that you were invested in the story before the update and still c:

Lmaooo yeah that was cringe. So cringe I originally couldn’t help letting the MC call the whole thing “cringe” directly, but obvi it’s medieval so I eventually changed it lol. But it’s a street market sorta thing so no bar/tavern there :sweat_drops:

Ahh I’m glad that you liked it despite it not being what you usually go for! It’s awesome to hear because I did wonder if I managed to incorporate the personality stats well or not C:

I approach this more like writing an interactive novel than a game–I want every choice/path to feel like it was meant to be/I wrote it for “you” or your character at any rate lol. (Most importantly that it’s a natural progression of the storyline for all the characters involved). It’s great that it felt like a full experience already, thank you for checking it out & posting!

Thanks for catching this! Apparently I missed uploading a .txt file, will do that rn and see if that fixes it :cold_sweat:

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Can confirm it’s fixed now, thanks.


Finished the demo. Caine is best boi/gal/pal.
As requested:

QuickSkip: 2 // StatusQuo: 63 // Polite: 70 // Social: 51

CL: 9 // Rel: 81
RL: 1 // Rel: 58
JL: -1 // Rel: 43

accepthand: true // whydididothis: false // spared: 1 // chug1: false // letter1: 1 // letter1sent: 1 // mydaisies: 3 // bookown: true // maskown: false // pov2wishful: 3

dreamin: 0 // dearmed: true // choicech: 1 // changeres: false // pov3ver: 13

sacrificial: 3 // jnick: no // closeness: 0

:star2:n/a

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Have to ask what’s stopping the MC from just being a deserter, like how would anyone even stop you?

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Because you are a powerful summoner with the ability to wield rather powerful contracts, you will be hunted down and either killed or imprisoned to be used. This is made mention of in the chapter where you head to the festival to pick up your second contract.

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As anne said those things are true infact in the very first chapter its mentioned for intance if you try to runn away before being officially contracted they find you and force you back home.

The MC is like a rare unicorn in there thoughts and desires where the vast majority of people dont see the problem and in fact follow blindly and go along with it.

Yet running away essentially means living a life on the run and in exile never safe never trusted unless worked with another.

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Hooray, an easy debug for once :smile:
Also thanks for the stats! Caine is indeed the best (I have a favorite and it’s not Caine)

Everyone said it pretty well but I’d def like to expand upon this detail more at some point c:

Religious fears/societal teachings are also a big part of MC’s reluctance to desert, the prospect of eternal damnation is scary–I wasn’t brought up to believe in that stuff, but if a god actually existed and said you’d go to hell forever if u defected, I might be inclined to believe lol. This is currently a bit in the priv demo, but I think I’d like to make it more apparent to earlier chapters at some point as well.

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Lol yeah, I think I get it now.

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