Weeping Gods (WIP, 06/DEC/2024) (307K on Patreon)

Only had the time to run as thief so far. Had the street rat song from Aladdin running through my head the whole time. Very much looking forward to more of this ancient Egyptian story.

8 Likes

Haha thank you! I think someone else here mentioned too that the thief reminded them of Aladdin. Itā€™s weird because I loved Aladdin as a child (okay who am I kidding I still do), but it honestly never came to my mind when I wrote that route! But I can definitely see the parallel :heart: Especially if you end up romancing the princess :eyes:

7 Likes

This is why Iā€™m so surprised both that the thief is trailing the noble and that the theif is trailing the noble by so much. I really thought thief would be the most popular route because of the Aladdin vibes.

3 Likes

You voted noble first too :stuck_out_tongue: I think lots of people just really like the ā€œvery troubled, but still a spoiled brat who masks with false bravadoā€ aspect of the noble. Thereā€™s a bit of a contradiction in their character which can be exciting. But I donā€™t mind! I will still put the same effort into all of the characters :)))

9 Likes

I did, but I donā€™t generally like thief characters (Leas is an exception, because if left to yourself, PC can do other things. Mine tends to be in forgery.) I donā€™t generally tend to play roles that would require much erā€¦slickness! :joy:

2 Likes

I generally love playing thieves or mages. But the noble really sort of matches the type of personality I love in a character.

I do love my guard Kebu though. I just imagine this gruff, kindhearted beefcake getting bullied by Zaia. :rofl:

Also, I definitely compared Thief to Aladdin. And Noble to Jasmine (sneaking out of palace and hanging among commonerā€™s).

Yunre: Hey!! You wanna fight!? rolls up their sleeve, but it unrolls cause of the soft fancy material ā€¦Ra, damnit!

6 Likes

Iā€™m curious what youā€™ll think of the characters once the routes really merge in chapter 2. Iā€™ll be writing them in a way that the text mostly will be the same-ish for everyone, with some extra flavor from time to time that is unique to the origins, but the dialogue options you can choose will be mostly available for everyone. So you can still keep the original characterā€™s established personality, but you can also change it up a bit if you want to. Weā€™ll see how it turns out.

~ insert ā€œWhy are you booing me? Iā€™m right!ā€ meme lol ~

7 Likes

Itā€™s so hard to rank them, I enjoyed all of them nearly equal, itā€™s really hard to tell, but I try to rank them and their stories:

  1. Priest, sheā€™s in way over her head. I enjoy the status she has in society as well as the option to choose her god.
  2. Thief. I enjoyed the path where she accidentally killed the guard and has to live with that bad conscience. Also, I enjoy the way she speaks and is highly perceptive.
  3. Noble. He doesnā€™t care and left his sister with the guard (he should deal with her - now I know hot THAT felt like for the guard) and what puts him before the guard is that heā€™s influenced by that guy with his spirit.
  4. Guard. Oh man, I did enjoy the guard, choosing the war injury and having to deal with pain throughout. I very much enjoyed how he fell down before Narmer and that he had some interaction with Zaia. Iā€™m looking forward to more options about how his day went.

About the new guard route:

When giving the war injury options ā€œYou lost a pinky fingerā€ made me laugh.

When you repress the feeling to thrw you glass at Zaia, and you think about how it would propably fly through them, you could make a comment when this happens with Qenna.

I would enjoy some interaction with the donkey at home - the thief has the geese and the priest the elephant, give the guard the donkey xD

Iā€™m always very excited about your updates and yours is the only wip I play with every update.

3 Likes

Done lol.

The captain will bring their donkey on the road when they are going to Abydos! :smiley: Iā€™ll make sure to include some interactions with it.

If your character isnā€™t interested in romance at all, you will also get an extra animal companion later in the story.

Be still my beating heart :heart: :heart: :heart: The next update is coming in a few hours ^^ Iā€™m writing up the last part I wanted for now, then Iā€™ll do some playtests and itā€™s a go :clap:

7 Likes

NEW UPDATE
This update is not as big as the previous ones, but I still made pretty good progress! :smiley: I hammered out most of the hefty choices, so next week, Iā€™ll add the rest of the variations, and then Chapter 1 will officially be done! (the first draft anyway)

Whatā€™s new:

  • 13k words added to the demo on the captain route, making the whole game pass the magic 200k line! The entire word count (with code) comes up to 204 000 now.
  • You can go to the festival with your Auntie or to the street party with your mom.
  • If youā€™re staying at home, you can now talk to your Auntie or laze around.
  • You can stay in your room after getting the letter and see who pops up unannounced while youā€™re in the middle of dressing lol.
  • You can choose NOT to be a war veteran now. See how it affects your relationship with your mother and the scene when you meet Narmer.
  • The first scene of Chapter 2 is playable with the captain! That makes the scene available to all origin characters now, including the older age choices that are locked out on the noble and thief route. Try and see what a 40+yo character knows when they remember back :wink:
  • I also went through the other routes and tried to find any typos and grammar mistakes that were left. However, I didnā€™t have time for all of the captainā€™s scenes yet, so mistakes can still pop up there.
  • The list of triggering content has been updated.

An important reminder: please start a new save. I added lots of permanent variables, which will break old saves.

If everything goes well, during next week, I can finish writing the rest of the captain origin, and polish up the entirety of chapter 1. That means, I can finally give you a word count without code as well. If I manage to finish that by next Friday, I will also work on reworking the main introduction post of the game to make it more accurate and up to date.

Thanks for supporting the game, thanks for reading, and thanks for the continuous supportive messages!

27 Likes

I finally played through the captain origin! Captain surprised me and I think it might come in at 2. Like others have remarked, I love how done with everything they are. Like my captain spent the whole first chapter just wanting to be left alone. Auntie Heset is the sweetest!

I also loved the cameo of noble MC helping their sister and standing awkwardly while she yells at the captain. Iā€™ll probably end up giving her the necklace back once those options are playabke, but it was so satasfying to get back at her. I donā€™t know that Iā€™d say priest MC is lucky given how badly the ritual can turn out, but they certainly got lucky in not having to deal with Petepihu (Iā€™m sure i buchered that name. I canā€™t spell. :expressionless:)

I also replayed the theif origin, and I did enjoy it more than I remembered, but I still think it ranks lower than the others for me. I canā€™t really pinpoint why though.

3 Likes

I think you might be the first who wrote that name out fully and correctly lol.

The thief is more immature than the others I think. I wrote them young on purpose, so maybe thatā€™s not for everyone. After playing the other origins, they could also feel less important to the whole story because they basically have no prior connections to any of the characters. They are completely new to the scene. That was actually the reason why I wrote the thief origin first, because I felt like maybe they arenā€™t as important as the other origin characters, so I wanted to prove myself wrong and give them a reason to be there regardless :smiley:

2 Likes

I was going to say that they do feel really young, but two things:

  1. This board has an ā€œeternal high schoolā€ contingent. A pretty big one it seems/feels sometimes. They think 40ā€™s ready for the nursing home and life ā€œpeaksā€ when youā€™re 18.
  2. I know people my motherā€™s age and older who still act like that (well, emotionally, they mostly canā€™t really, physically) and it is extremely off-putting. Given what the Guardā€™s mother said, Thiefā€™s grandfather was one of those people. So young (or ought to be young) feeling or not, Thiefā€™s probably hitting a lot of buttons that arenā€™t labeled ā€œamusementā€ for some of us.

Iā€™m honestly not sure what youā€™re talking about here :sweat_smile: The captainā€™s mother was talking about the thiefā€™s grandfather being a thief himself and that she had to hunt him down pretty much weekly for the things he stole. Because they were poor. They still are. The thiefā€™s family lives in poverty. Thatā€™s why the thief steals, because they have no other means to provide for their family. But yes, like I said, the thief character is young. Some people like it, some donā€™t.

6 Likes

Iā€™m gonna call that a win.

1 Like

Ah. It read to me like she was also saying the attitude and behaviours (aside from just the stealing) were the same. Given that she knew the man over likely quite a span of years, that degree of smartassery and (likely only half put-on) immaturity would be extremely frustrating, to put it lightly.

I mean, I didnā€™t feel my thief as ā€˜youngā€™. He hits me as in his 20s and trying to help feed his family and siblings. At least, my thief head cannon is about 23 to 26. I feel the noble felt younger to me. The non widow at least felt like he was right out of the teens and still at the tail end of his rebellious phase. xD

Priest and Guard definitely read older and more mature. But that fits them.

I didnā€™t want age-gated, so no one of my MCā€™s is a teen. I head cannon noble at 21, thief at about 23, Priest 28, and Guard 32. :sweat_smile:

Yes, thatā€™s what I meant, that the thief and noble are both canonically younger than the priest and the captain :smiley: But still, the thief is the youngest because their age is capped between 18-34. The noble is 18-39. The captain and priest are both 25-49. You can still play them with your preferred age, of course, itā€™s just that ages outside of that range wonā€™t make sense for their character.

Ah, I see. Well, the mother didnā€™t care about his attitude, whatever it was. She only cared that she had to do so much extra work because that dude did the same, stealing from nobles, so her as the Captain had to go after him a lot and it was annoying. Thief mc does the same. They steal from nobles mostly, so the captain is pressured by high society to chase them down, which is what annoys them. Although the captain doesnā€™t always go after the thief mc, if they can get away with it.

5 Likes

Seneb wants everyone to know that he is a highly skilled petty thief with dashing good looks. Heā€™s also the bread winner of his younger siblings and he wouldnā€™t resort to thievery if he didnā€™t have to. Also, ppl need to stop being so stupidly tall and really, rich ppl donā€™t need all that coin to waste on stupid things when it could buy important things like food.

4 Likes

Well, I meanā€¦thatā€™s who has the most and the nicest stuffā€¦

Noble feels like a pretty sheltered early to mid twenties to me, I agree. (Thatā€™s also relatively young, though.)

2 Likes