Happy Halloween. I’ll be brief. I now have a finished draft of all four segments of the story.
- Prologue: The Herald
- Episode 1: Secret of Gloam Lake
- Intermission: For Whom the Chime Rings
- Episode 2: Dwellers of Bodenforst
Altogether, it’s over 100,000 words, with Dwellers of Bodenforst being the longest at over 45,000.
The next step for me will be a closed Beta. That might seem odd, since there was an open beta with hundreds of players a year ago. But the purpose of that was mostly to confirm that I wasn’t crazy for thinking there would be people other than me who thought this was a cool, interesting story format. To gauge market interest, as the business people would say.
At this point I’m confident in the premise, so the purpose of the next round is to improve the quality. For that, I turn to some people I know in real life, including my local writer’s circle. That way I can talk to these people face to face and get ideas on how their experience went. Based on their feedback, I’ll make further edits.
I would really like to get this thing published as a paid game before Christmas. Not for any sales reason, but just as a personal goal. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to button up some UX details on this.