Welcome, future players! I am excited to introduce my first-ever game, created using the Twine engine. This game combines elements of horror, romance, and mystery to provide a unique and thrilling experience. Keep in mind this is a choice based game so I'm taking my time to make every choice effect the story. I would love for this to have some replay value!

The story begins with the 26-year-old protagonist, who discovers that their family may be cursed, leading to the sudden deaths of multiple family members. You, the protagonist, and your father's side are the only remaining family. No surprised there since the deaths seems to be on your mother's side of the family.

As of the current state, the first episode of the game has yet to be released! But if you would like to take a look at the game page it's up. I tried my best to make it eye catching!

In this incomplete first episode, there are four NPCs with whom the player can pursue romance/platonic/enemy relationships with. However, my plan for this season includes a total of eight NPCs, with six of them being romanceable and the remaining two being non-romanceable. (or depending on how you play some of them might end up dead or abandoned.)

As of January 10th, I was pretty much halfway done with the first episode. I had around 6,000 words in there, including code. My goal is to make it around 10,000 to 15,000 words by the end of the month and submit it, so I'm working hard on that. Also, I wanted to mention, the UI and theme are fully functional, it passed all the test runs I've done on it. So, it's all good to go, no worries on that front. I'm really excited about how it's coming along and hope everyone will like it too!

This is kind of just a mini update since I was excited!

I wanted to provide an update on the progress of the character creation section in my project. It has undergone a significant number of revisions, with over a thousand changes made to the functionality. One of the major adjustments I had to make was to the "Bald" selection and how it affected the hair color and texture. However, I am now satisfied with the current state and will do my best to resist making further changes until the release of the first episode. After that, the focus will shift to addressing any bugs that may arise.

I'm excited to say that the NPCs are all implemented for episode 1  and the Relationship UI is looking absolutely perfect, if I do say so myself. I know, I know, it's not much, but as I do not write on weekends or holidays I was only able to add around a few hundred words for this update. 

Anyways, I just wanted to give you all another quick update on the progress of the game. But, keep an eye out, because the next thing on my list is to add portrait art for each of the NPCs. Can you even imagine how cool that's going to look? I can hardly wait!

After this post my next one won't be until Friday. In which I hope to have 1,000 words done.

It's finally Friday, and there's not much new to report on except for the fact that I have successfully reached my weekly goal of 1,000 words. However, I can give you a little more insight into what you can expect in the first episode of my game. Your character will have the opportunity to interact with the first four NPCs. These interactions will not be overly complicated, but they will include a few dialogue options related to either friendly or romantic. But keep in mind the romance is close to none at the moment. Hoping to increase romantic interactions later in the season. 

In this episode, my main goal is to get a sense of your character's play style. There will be choices that involve strength, charisma, and cowardice, which will affect the outcome of the story. It's important to note that some of your choices may have dire consequences and could even lead to the death of a character in this episode. So, be mindful of your actions. There is only one Mc death at the moment and it is easily avoidable. I'm starting the NPC portrayed design process at the moment and hope to have some prototypes to show case on next Friday. 

I'm posting an update early. I'm going to change the days I update to Thursday because honestly I didn't know my get together every Friday night with a group of friends would interfere with my upload schedule. But it seems we don't say goodbyes until midnight. So instead of struggling to form readable sentences on here while simultaneously entertaining a group of my peers I decide to move this up. 

tl;dr I move weekly updates to Thursdays and I ramble more.

Sadly I must admit my defeat and say I have not done 1,000 words this week. Maybe like 500 words? I've been busy focusing on WHY MY STATS WEREN'T WORKING!

but now they are

They'd do this thing where stats only change once you actually pick your option then open the stat window right after. If you didn't do that your stats just wouldn't change and you'd be missing some dialogue. So to forcibly make you view your stats change without it being too annoying I made them into notifications. Now with most options you get a notification bar on rather it decreased or increased. It looks hella cute so I like it.

Also some of my page links aren't... linking? As you can see from the red text in the gif. I don't know why but my keyboard just doesn't do parentheses right. They come out weird and sometimes backwards so I just fix them as I go. I have a few beta readers and I send them my progress every 1,000 words to make sure grammar and/or game functions are working properly. Once I start working on later parts of this season I might add more beta reader. May even get another writer once I start planning season 2. Yes there will be a season 2.

So now that looks and functionality is out of the way lets get onto what's really important. The story! 

So I said in my last update that a death screen is in this episode and I just got into writing it. It's nothing too intense and is a very easily avoidable death. Pick the right stats or just avoid the wrong options. We're on the brink of episode one's climax. You've interacted with the monster of this episode twice so far and you're getting close to meeting the fun characters. I might push the option of a character's death in episode 2? I don't know. I said it was going to be in episode one but with how the pacing is going a death may be too fast? It's also an avoidable death. So I either push the death to a later episode or lengthen episode 1 a bit. I'll see when I get there.

That's about all I have this week. I'll update ya'll next Thursday and see if I reach my goal or if I need to question my high standards.