Hiya! So! Things. Words. Stuff.

So, last month was the end of the entire accept path which was a huge milestone and I'm very happy I was able to get his far. With that said, that doesn't mean I can't still make changes and improve stuff later. The entire time I've been writing this story, I've been doing so with the intention of going back through at points and revising and improving upon earlier sections. I did that a while back when I revised days 1-4 and it made a huge difference.

Right now, if I compare Ted's route to Daren's route, people loved Ted's route. I loved writing it. It turned out better than I expected it to and I received a ton of positive feedback on it. The cave ending will most-likely be left as it is aside from improving the wording in some lines. Aside from that, I feel like it's perfect. The non-cave ending had some criticisms which I'm keeping in mind. I may make some edits to it later. Now, the endings to Daren's route: I don't think they were necessarily bad, but compared to Ted's endings, these didn't really have the same level of impact. The biggest issue, at least from feedback I've received is that the endings felt too short and that too much was left ambiguous. I knew something felt off, but couldn't figure out what. Now, at least, I know some things I can do to improve upon those three endings for Daren's route. I won't be removing parts of it, but rather I plan to add more scenes in between and expand current ones.

Oh right, the other thing is that I didn't want to have everything explained in these endings. I wanted to leave some mystery, and leave questions that will be answered in the reject routes. I'm pretty sure I didn't execute that well unfortunately.

To summarize: Ted route is amazing. Daren's route could use some improvements, and I know I can successfully make those changes in the future.

When will those changes happen? I dunno. I think the best way for me to handle it is to take a step back from it for a while and work on other routes, that way I can come back to it with a fresh mindset later and do a better job with it.

For the meantime, with just the reject path left, I've decided to start on Sean's route. My goal is to get his route up through the end of Day 6.

With how things are looking so far, both Sean's and Tracy's routes are fairly self-contained. I can choose either of their routes, work on it, and not have to worry too much about how would interact with the other routes. I know what events will happen and what secrets will be revealed in both of these. On the other hand, Daren's, Ted's, and Marshall's routes have some overlap. Each of them will share some similarities with each other and so I'll have to be careful how I go about writing them. I've got some scenes planned that could work for any of these three routes, so it's just a matter of figuring out which pieces of the puzzle I want to fit where.

Oh, and I've decided against writing a Jesse route in the end. Every idea I came up with for it felt out of place when compared to every other route in the vn. So I decided that rather than forcing the issue just for the sake of having another route, it would be better to focus on other routes instead. Jesse will likely have an arc in at least one of the other routes, but there's just not enough there for him to have his own route.

So yeah. That's a thing.

At the moment, I have no clue when the next update will come out. Stuff at home is getting more and more hectic so my available time is diminishing by a lot, but I'm still working on stuff when I can. At the moment I've got 2000 words done, which isn't nearly as much as I'd like, but it's a start at least. I think the further along I get into this route, the quicker the rest of it will come.

Anyways yeah, that's it. I just wanted to let people know my current thoughts and stuff, what I'm planning, how things are going, etc. I'll likely post another devlog again next month to let people know again what's up and stuff. I don't want to go radio silent on people.

Two more things, cause it's always fun to do:

Current popularity results from this previous update. Only 21 responses so far but it's still something! I am finding it funny that when Ted's first ending came out, Daren got voted most popular character by a longshot. Now that Daren's ending has happened, Ted is the new most popular character. I imagine once Sean, Marshall, and Tracy have their own routes get further (or started in the case of Sean and Tracy) their popularity will probably start to go up. They've not had nearly as much screentime as other characters yet, which was intentional for the accept path specifically.

The last thing I'll post just for fun cause I keep getting teased by one of my friends for going back to character bio stuff. I've had to resize/reshape the selection screen for it to make room for 4 more entries, though one of them isn't ready yet so there's a blank space for now. Some of you may recognize them from a set of side stories.

Edit: OH RIGHT! ALMOST FORGOT TO SAY A THING!

Ending screens. They're bare and boring right now. I finally figured out what I want to do for them now, though I also know it'll take a lot of time. I want to make pixel animations for them that basically recap the whole story up through to the ending. I think it might be kinda cool.

And also, I apologize for forgetting to make the ending screens skippable. It turns out that deciding to do the final touches and upload when you have covid is not the best idea. Whoops. At least I changed the order of stuff so if you exit to the main menu during those screens, flags are set so that it remembers you've seen that ending. You no longer have to sit through the whole thing for that.

EDIT EDIT:

After watching Mr Josh's playthrough, I've realized just how badly Daren's route endings need a rework. With DrakeWingGaming starting on Daren's route as well, I want to make sure this route is in a state that I'm actually happy with. Therefore that will be my top priority for next update. I had reasons for leaving stuff out. Those reasons aren't good enough, so I'm going to go back through and add a bunch more. I'd like to actually show what went on with Tracy and her boss. I'd like to show more of what Marshall and Ted talked about. Sean's route has something in particular that happens that people have said they really wanted to see more of too. I plan to address all of these.

As nice as it would be to get a start on one of the other routes, I do not want to leave Daren's route the way it currently is. I'm hoping these changes won't take too long, but I shall see.