Author Archives: Paul Wang

Introducing: Shadow of the Eagles

As those of you who’ve been following A Creator’s Guide to Writing and Worldbuilding might know, I’ve been pre-producing a new game in my spare time over the course of the past year.

Now, that game is entering full production.

Let me introduce you to Shadow of the Eagles.

Shadow of the Eagles is a text-based military life simulator set during the time of the French Revolution and the Wars of Napoleon. Starting as a volunteer soldier in 1792, your character will have the chance to fight battles, gain glory, scheme, plunder, and rise in the ranks from the Terror to the Waterloo Campaign.

It is, in many ways, a distillation of what the Dragoon Saga offers, but it also goes far beyond it. Instead of commanding a troop, a squadron, or a regiment, Shadow of the Eagles will let you rise to the very highest ranks of military command, putting you in charge of a division, a corps, even entire armies – and let you change not just the course of battles and campaigns, but that of history itself.

This may all sound like relatively familiar ground – but that doesn’t mean I’m not going to be doing a whole lot more with this game too. unlike my previous games, Shadow of the Eagles will be made in Twine, which allows me to implement a graphical user interface, sound, music, art, and all kinds of features which I’ve never been able to do before. I’ll also be self-publishing, which means I’ll have more control over how development shakes out.

This also means I’ll be funding development differently. Instead of working off an advance from a publisher, I’ll be putting my trust in all of you to help me put together this project and make it the best it can be. With that in mind, I’ve set up a Patreon just for the development of Shadow of the Eagles. Supporters will get access to early-access development builds, a members-only Discord Server, and detailed updates, as well as a chance to deliver feedback.

In the meantime, if you’re curious about my development plans for Shadow of the Eagles, you can check out my outline in A Creator’s Guide to Writing and Worldbuilding.

In addition, this month’s Soldier’s Guide to the Infinite Sea, and Adventurer’s Guide to the Fledgling Realms are also now up.


November Update

When I was finishing up work on A Time of Monsters, I promised myself that I’d spend maybe a month or two winding down, just focusing on the fixing the post-release bugs which every game will have, and doing my best to rest my mind as much as possible.

So yeah, I lied.

The truth is, I find it hard to focus on something even at the best of times (I’m beginning to suspect that’s because of undiagnosed ADHD or something). When I’m nervously waiting on a commercial and critical consensus to form on a game I’ve spent two and a half years working on, it becomes bad enough that I can’t even focus on relaxing. That means I’ve mostly spent the past two days fixing bugs and searching out feedback and reviews ad infinitum, which probably isn’t healthy for my emotional state.

Which is why I’ve also started doing some prototyping work on my next project – the one I’ve been talking about in A Creator’s Guide to Writing and Worldbuilding this past year. I’ll probably have an official announcement up on that sometime either at the end of this year, or the beginning of the next, depending on how things go.

Speaking of which, this month’s Soldier’s Guide to the Infinite Sea, Adventurer’s Guide to the Fledgling Realms, and Creator’s Guide to Writing and Worldbuilding, are also now up, if you want to take a look.


Out Now: Hunter the Reckoning – A Time of Monsters

It’s here.

After two and a half years of work (and more than two years of being “the secret project I can’t talk about”, Hunter the Reckoning – A Time of Monsters is now out on Steam, and the Choice of Games Omnibus on iOS store and Google Play.

I can’t say that writing something like this was entirely in my comfort zone at first, but I can say that I had an absolute blast coming up with this one. In many ways, A Time of Monsters is a love letter, to the city I live in, to the people I know (who’ve inspired so many of the characters in this story) and to humanity as a whole.

I hope you find yourself loving it as much as I loved writing it.


A Few Changes

Some of you may have already noticed that I’ve made a few changes to the website today.

First of all, I’ve archived the Flash Games page. It’s still there, and so are all the individual pages attached to it, but it’s just not regularly accessible anymore. I figure that most of the people who visit this site are here for updates to my Interactive Fiction more than anything else. Flash hasn’t really been relevant for a decade, and the games which I did complete in that part of my life are really only accessible via emulator these days.

This also puts more room in the menu for another page, reserved for my next project – which probably isn’t text-centred enough to qualify as interactive fiction.

In the meantime, I’ve also put up a new page for A Time of Monsters in preparation for its release on the 13th.


October Update

So, it should surprise nobody that I’m having an extremely busy month. That’s why my Patreon articles (and thus update) have come in a bit later than usual, although I think I’ll be able to get next month’s in on time.

With A Time of Monsters now announced, full-scale beta-testing has begun, which means I’m getting a lot more in the way of feedback. I’m committed to trying to make this game as good as I can, so most of my time is currently being spent addressing that feedback, either by adding new options and new text, or by tweaking existing text to improve clarity and impact.

The rest of my time is mostly devoted to “post-production”: things like approving character portraits, adding images, working in marketing material, implementing achievements and so on. This is all stuff I need to get done before I release in less than a month. I should also probably create a page for A Time of Monsters at some point too.

In the meantime, this month’s Soldier’s Guide to the Infinite Sea, Adventurer’s Guide to the Fledgling Realms, and Creator’s Guide to Writing and Worldbuilding, are finally all up for you to tide you over, so take a look at those when you have the chance.


Coming Soon: Hunter the Reckoning – A Time of Monsters

So, now you know what this secret project has been.

For the past two years, I’ve been working on Hunter the Reckoning – A Time of Monsters, an interactive fiction set in Downtown Vancouver within the World of Darkness. It’s been a unique experience, working not just in something like the present day, in someone else’s setting, but also in a location which is literally close to home (as in, the other day, I took the train in to take some pictures of the locations you’ll be visiting), and the result has been something which is really unlike anything I’ve ever done before.

In A Time of Monsters, you play as a young member of Vancouver’s depressingly large homeless population, thrown into the midst of mortal peril as your encampment is raided by the police. Within hours, you find yourself hunted – not by law enforcement, but by something stranger, deadlier, and hungrier.

Without money, allies, or most of your possessions, you must make your way through the heart of a city which rarely has sympathy for the likes of you. Where will you rest your head? How will you fill your stomach? And most importantly, how will you escape the monsters at your heels? Who will you trust? What weapons will you scrounge? What path will you take?

How will you fight back?

Hunter the Reckoning – A Time of Monsters comes out on Android, iOS, and Steam (which also has a demo available right now) on November 13th. Expect more news soon.


September Update

I’m done – kind of.

A few minutes ago, I just submitted the “full draft” of my current project. Granted, it’s still missing some ancillary bells and whistles, and some planned balancing features, but the project is, for all intents and purposes, “complete”.

Honestly, I thought I’d be able to announce this project way before this point. The fact that I haven’t has been an interesting experience to say the least. I cannot count the number of times I’ve overheard or read something which really made me want to talk about it. I understand the necessity of an NDA in this case, but I do wish my publisher could have played a little faster and looser with the timeline here.

That being said, I will definitely be able to announce what this project is by this time next month, you can absolutely count on that.

If you’re looking for some of my writing that isn’t under NDA though, this month’s Soldier’s Guide to the Infinite Sea, Adventurer’s Guide to the Fledgling Realms, and Creator’s Guide to Writing and Worldbuilding, are all up for your perusal.


August Update

I’m currently about halfway through the last branch of the last act of this project that I still can’t talk about. It’s nearing about 900k total words in length now, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the total word count tops a million by the time I get the epilogues and the reference materials done too.

As for what it actually is, that still has to wait. I’ve been told I can’t announce until a trailer’s ready, and that won’t be done until the art’s done, and the art… might still be a little ways off.

In the meantime however, this month’s Soldier’s Guide to the Infinite Sea, Adventurer’s Guide to the Fledgling Realms, and Creator’s Guide to Writing and Worldbuilding, are all up, so take a look at those (including some notes on my next project) to tide you over.


July Update

Not much of an update this month. We’re kind of in the middle of a heat wave, so any kind of extraneous movement is about five times more uncomfortable than it would be otherwise.

I have still been working on my current project though, to the point where I’m now about halfway through the second branch (out of three) of the final act. That means an announcement for what it actually is should be months – if not weeks – away.

In the meantime, this month’s Soldier’s Guide to the Infinite Sea, Adventurer’s Guide to the Fledgling Realms, and Creator’s Guide to Writing and Worldbuilding, are all up.


June Update

It’s been another month working on the project I still can’t talk about yet. To be honest, I’d have thought I’d be able to announce it by now. I’m maybe only a few months from finishing it up. Of course, announcing isn’t my decision either way, so I guess it’ll be up to higher powers than me to decide when we’re ready to go public.

This month’s Soldier’s Guide to the Infinite Sea, Adventurer’s Guide to the Fledgling Realms, and Creator’s Guide to Writing and Worldbuilding, are all up. The last of these is the transcript of a Q&A session about the project I plan on working on after the one I’m currently doing (don’t worry, this one won’t take 5 years). The questions are from my backers on Patreon, who support basically all the writing I do, so if you’ve got the money to throw at me, I’d be happy to take it.