Devlog 5: New Year, Same Me

Hey hey, it's Roanock.

Happy new year, I'm still at large.

The writers block has been big this past month. I'm not sure if it's been the month itself or the general awareness that I'm going to have to tackle the challenge of asynchronous narrative.

Is that the right word? It sounds fancy so I'm sticking with it.

I'm going into this update with three goals in mind: First, I left an IOU one wilderness survival experience which I intend to either deliver or at least chip some progress onto for this release. Second, I've come to the realisation that moving a non-sentient human body around can be a bit awkward, so I'm doing a small bit of retcon to improve the story in that regard. Third, I've started work on a part of the story that's an open-exploration part.

You know when a game throws a town map at you and says "explore"? That.

Now, the second point I can easily do, I think the hard part there is just going back and re-reading what I've written (Something no writer is ever embarrassed to do) The first point I don't really want to delay for much longer. The more I work on the game the (hopefully) more eyes will see it and the more people I will be owing that experience.

Also, I can't reference the results of that until everyone's done it.

The third point... Now that is something I've not got a clear benchmark for completing. Sort of a "Rest of the fucking owl" estimate. I can announce that we're into Chapter 2 of the story. I'm just not fully confident on where I want to declare Chapter 3 to be, thus have no idea if it'd be sized for one release window.

So why have I put more work into point three than one or two?

A feeling of progress? I want to feel like I'm making good progress and going forwards with the story feels more progressy than going back to polish up a few things. I'm sure I need to kick that mentality for the health of any story I plan to write.

After posting this I'll focus my efforts on points two then one.

If I have time for point three, then I'll chip away at it, but first I'll catch the easy wins. I also need to be doing more to tempt people into throwing engagement my way. Leave a comment if you want me to post a poll, or would be interested in a discord, or are in the group of "Well I would throw money at this guy but there's nothing incentivizing me to do so."

I realise I should be doing my job as a community builder/manager better.

I suppose I can offer a sneak peak at who and what's coming in the next update behind the paywall.

Till next time,