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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Another relatively uneventful month over here, although I did have a little hiccup earlier this week when half of my apartment’s power (namely, the half my router is plugged into) went out for two days. I decided to make the most of it by writing without distractions while I waited for my property manager to call an electrician to fix the wiring.
Which is to say, that’s how I managed to write 12 500 words in 48 hours.
Needless to say, it’s been a busy few weeks out here. In between the customary anxiety/worry/fear over Burden of Command‘s release and my normal workload, I’ve had little time to do much else.
Speaking of which, today’s the last day to get Burden of Command at its discounted launch sale price. Based on the reviews, it’s pretty clear that it’s not everyone’s cup of tea, but we’ve gotten some really rave reviews from some specialisedwargaming sites, so it’s clear that it is absolutely someone’s cup of tea – perhaps even yours.
Paul Wang 