Posted October 26, 2023 by Steamberry Studio
Hello everyone! It's been about a month since my last update so I am checking in with you all on WSC.
The current word count is 404,000 words and 87% of the way to the target word count. ╰(*°▽°*)╯
When I first started this project I thought that, surely, I'd keep it below 350k. LoL
(づ￣ 3￣)づ
So what have I been up to writing-wise...?
Working on Chapter 8 and chapter 9 mostly. I am about halfway through all the chapter 9 content for the four remaining characters.
In my last update, I said the story splits at the start of chapter 9 - this was...wrong. Originally the story did split at Chapter 9 but then I added a chapter early on (New chapter 3) and the paths actually now split at chapter 10, so I completely misspoke last time because my brain short circuited and I forgot that I have an extra chapter now.
┗( T﹏T )┛
I have finished Kav up to chapter 9 and I have finished Noel up to chapter 9. I am now starting on Raif's content for Chapter 9.
I have also been editing early chapters. I have a whole document of revisions that I intend to make and while I don't normally write out of sequence, because there are some more significant plot and motivation changes, it's been helpful to write some of them into early chapters because they do somewhat alter how things are going to go through the final chapters.
Like before, I've received 2 new BGs + one new sketch.
I've been working on some other things but need more time to get it to a useful state for the game so maybe I'll include it in next month's update!
And unfortunately these things don't rely exclusively on me so I somewhat have to wait on other people to be available to help. 💪
Writing, of course.
That's my main focus until the end of the year. I have around 60,000 words left to hit my target word count, which is probably a little too low actually. But I'll adjust that if I need to later on.
Between them, Raif and Yren have about 16,000 words of content in Chapter 9 - about 3000 of that is written. My goal is to get the rest of that complete in the next couple of weeks. Afterwards, I will probably be focusing on fully completing each character's route one by one (which means writing all three of their final chapters before moving to the next character.)
For anyone who hasn't followed my developer process for my previous two projects, I typically do a pretty extensive editing phase. Though it's obviously not as long as drafting, I do want to get a full structural edit done before I start releasing the chapters one by one.
I know I will be drafting through November and December, then editing through January.
February is where things get fuzzy, because I really can't estimate how much time I'll need to spend editing. I've never written a project structured like this before, which means I've never edited a project structured like this before. That makes it really difficult to estimate how long it will take.
In addition, I am having to wait on the new BG artist to create the necessary BGs. I'm hoping that by the end off January, I will have all the necessary backgrounds for the first couple of chapters.
Some of the features I need help coding are relying on help from a friend whose schedule I'm not sure about for the next few months.
So I'm still not 100% sure on when you can expect the first update. Hopefully Q1 of 2023, though!