Happy Thursday! For the public CoG Demo I have:
Heavily revised Marcurios’ conversation at the mingle scene
Partially revised Evangeline’s
For the Patreon demo I have:
Finished revising banquet conversation with betrothed (some of the choices should be a little longer now)
Started revising the lead up to the dance scene
Fixed a bug where a dutiful princess could reject Connor at the dance
Fixed a bug where a self-serving princess couldn’t always choose Justin as a dance partner
It’s Thursday again! Due to some technical issues, I have not been able to prepare a demo update for Patreon for today, but I still have one prepped for the public demo. My apologies on the delay, I should be able to fix everything for next Thursday 
For the public CoG Demo I have:
Reworked conversations with Evangeline and Willem
Added an opportunity to determine the fate of Raedin’s special substance
Added a treasury stat…you will soon have to think about how your actions affect the kingdom’s coffers
Happy Thursday! For the public CoG Demo I have:
Finished reworking the mingle scene (for now)
Started revising the feast scene (and fixing a ton of pronoun errors smh)
Added another opportunity to enjoy some mulled wine (or stay clearheaded)
For the Patreon demo I have:
Finished revising dance scenes with Justin, Nora, and Connor, making them more realistic, more response to previous choices, and more romantic (assuming you’ve been flirting)
Partially revised dances with Evangeline, Garrett, and Mirabel
Made it a little easier to ask alternative ROs to dance (though dutiful MCs still will dance with their betrothed)
Renamed “self-serving” stat to “independent” to be a little less morally coded
This week’s newsletter is also completely free, being a special year in review one. This Saturday marks one year since the IKH demo first went public!
In the newsletter I also mention an experimental livestream I recently tried. I’m hoping to give it another go on Sunday around 4:30 PST if anyone wants to join me as I read through the most current draft of IKH, make minor edits, and provide some commentary.
This is meant to be a chill, low-commitment way for me to get some work done while hanging out with anyone interested. With two kids under three, I’m unfortunately not able to guarantee when I’ll be able to do this, so if this interests you I’d recommend subscribing, ringing the little bell, or joining the Discord where I can ping when I’m on and give a little heads up when I’m hoping to be on.
Happy Thursday again everyone! Updates are now live and I have a request for you. There’s been an interesting conversation about marketing brewing this week and one of the suggestions made was to have games actively recommend similar titles for further reading at the end of a game.
I’d like to do that for IKH but I would need your help. I have no idea what other games you all are playing, and what similarities they have with IKH. If you have a moment and have been enjoying IKH, feel free to share:
Thanks in advance! I’ll look into everything you recommend and may include them on the end page in a future update.
Speaking of updates, let’s talk about the recent one.
Discover a secret Hero Mode and gain +10 to all skills
Discover a secret Romance Mode and start the game with maxed out (platonic) relationship stats
Toggle Story Mode for romance and skill hints
More details on the secret cheat modes in the newsletter.
Finished revising dance scenes with Evangeline, Mirabel, and Garrett (this includes expanded romantic versions and better flow)
Fixed a bug where you couldn’t get injured in Chapter 1
And with that, I am done with the dance scene (for now). There are a lot of moving parts in this scene now so please let me know if anything feels clunky, out of character, or otherwise off-putting.
Is Eva fine with being a mistress?
Still a very interesting demo so far and the
First one that comes to mind is blood legacies a high fantasy demo that has a similar father child relationship except much crueler…like a lot more but uh yea it’s a I believe high fantasy (might be considered low fantasy I don’t think so but)..not really sure how else to describe it without spoilers
It would definitely make some sense with her personality and goals even if it’s not her preferred arrangement. The more alternative romance paths aren’t yet fully solidified but that will likely be one of them. Connor wouldn’t be very thrilled but he may not be able to do a whole lot about it 
Someone asked a related question over on Tumblr, here’s a brief breakdown on what the various ROs think about marriage.
So Nora doesn’t mind. What I’m trying to say is can my mistress (Eva) also be Nora’s mistress? Can she romantically straight but sexually bi? I want something serious with both and she would the third most power under Nora and I as king making her my second queen, and giving far more power than she does now. My Mc is laid-back, cunning and loves beautiful women just as much as he loves to fight( he’s always down to slaughter his enemies with a smile on his face). But he doesn’t sleep around he prefers a useful loyal beauty and Nora and Eva are extremely useful and the two most beautiful. So if he can get them to be best friends with benefits it eliminate any jealousy and animosity toward each other, strengthen their loyalty to me. And with my power, Nora’s influence and Eva’s connections it would hard for my opps to try and sow discord and solidify Mc power and influence.
Think about how can they when the queen also sleeps with her husband’s mistress and she’s her BFF? Plus the king doesn’t show favorites because both are his favorite and he gives a lot of love and affection. And my Mc’s laid-backpersonality shows because he is is openly affectionate and protective with both and approves of both to do the same even when he’s not around.
That’s some next level relational intrigue that I definitely never considered when sketching out the romance paths! While there are no true poly routes in IKH, I hope by the time we’re finished we’ll be able to come up with a satisfying path that makes sense for your MC.
Romance will probably be one of the last things I really refine, so I’m thinking out loud here, but given the world and characters, pursuing both characters wouldn’t work out quite the way your MC might hope. When I said Connor wouldn’t be too happy I meant Nora (my bad, sorry, though Connor is pretty protecting of his sister so he might be mad too if he’s alive)…Nora’s a pretty pious and traditional sort of woman who believes marriages should be monogamous. She’s not totally naive though and knows that often in the case of loveless arranged marriages, royals take on lovers on the side, and she is somewhat resigned to this being a possibility. But that doesn’t mean she would like it.
More likely, she would be either cold or heartbroken with an unfaithful spouse (depending on whether he lead her on or not), though she would remain faithful herself. Her opinion of you would definitely collapse. That said, she is a pretty loyal individual and takes marriage seriously, so even if she’s pretty mad at you it would take a lot for her to do something to betray you. She’s all in, even if you’re not, basically.
Evangeline is a different matter. While not especially pious or traditional, she does have a pretty strong ambitious streak and would never be fully satisfied with another woman holding more power than she. I don’t know if she would ever stop seeing Nora as a threat unless Nora was somehow also well under Evangeline’s thumb.
IKH takes strong inspirational from real historical norms (insofar as my budding knowledge on the topic allows) and I want the romance endings to feel true to the times. I have a vague recollection of a similar-ish scenario where the wife and the mistress become (platonic) besties but I can’t recall which royals those were, and I think more often than not these sorts of arrangements didn’t end super well for anyone. I might have to look into that story to see if any if it would apply in this scenario (my hunch is no, or only with a very specific playthrough…I don’t see Evangeline and Nora getting along in most scenarios tbh, they have pretty different values).
That, however, won’t be for some time yet. I have a huuuuuuge list of things I gotta get to before then 
Hope that helps, and hope it’s not too disappointing!
damn nobles and there ambitions
The only good noble, is a headless noble.
And it’s update day again!
Finished revising the banquet conversation with your betrothed (some of the choices should be a little longer now)
Started revising the lead up to the dance scene
Fixed a bug where a dutiful princess could reject Connor at the dance
Fixed a bug where a self-serving princess couldn’t always choose Justin as a dance partner
Please note there will be no public update next Thursday on account of technical issues I had when updating the Patreon demo a month ago. We should be back in the groove the following week.
Started revising Osdric’s speech
Added a restore checkpoint option which should bring you to the start of Chapter 2
Added a neutral reaction to Mirabel getting blood on your betrothed’s gift in Chapter 1
This is really good so far. I like the prose and characters so far, excited to see where the story goes. I also go to UVic, do you have any places that you like to write on campus?
Niiiiice another Islander! I actually graduated almost a decade ago (2017) so my memory of those days is getting dim, but I seem to recall having a few different computer labs I would frequent. The law building had the best one iirc, nice and quiet, and Clearihue maybe? I roamed a lot, it’s getting to be a blur.
Thank you for the kind words, and feel free to share what your major is if you’re comfortable!
I’m in engineering 
currently burning time reading wips while procrastinating on finals studying lol
No new update for the public demo this week, sorry folks. This is due to some technical errors that prevented me from updating the Patreon demo last month. We’ll be back for next week though!
Updated the stats screen and included an appearance section
Added an option to skip character creation
Started work on a toggle “repeat mode” that echoes your last choice to you before continuing the narrative
Made a small adjustment to make it clearer to dutiful heirs that other dance partners are available on other playthroughs