Category Archives: Interactive Fiction

May Update

This past month, I’ve had some more time to work on my monthly columns, which means May’s articles are a bit longer and more in-depth than usual.

In addition to the normal Soldier’s Guide to the Infinite Sea and Adventurer’s Guide to the Fledgling Realms articles, I’ve also written a post-mortem of Lords of Infinity for this month’s Creator’s Guide to Writing and Worldbuilding. It discusses a lot of the feedback I’ve gotten from fans over the course of the past two months, as well as the lessons I’m taking going forward into my next interactive fiction project (which I’ve also started preliminary work on).

As usual, these are funded by those of you who contribute to my Patreon, which is honestly one of the major reasons I’ve been able to keep up writing full-time. This line of work doesn’t make anywhere near as much money as most people think, and even with the surge of income from Lords of Infinity‘s release, we’re still not in particularly good shape financially. It was not easy to go more than four years working on a single project without any new release revenue, and oftentimes it was my Patreon which filled the gap and made it so I didn’t have to get a second job or go to friends or family for help making rent.

So thank you, to all of you who’ve contributed during that time. I wouldn’t have been able to devote anywhere near the amount of time and effort I did to Lords of Infinity without you, which means the quality of the finished narrative owes a lot to your generosity.


March Update

Well, it has certainly been a very eventful month so far. Lords of Infinity may be released, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been fielding a constant stream of bug reports, feedback, and other suggestions for updates, which I’ve been trying to get out at a fairly steady pace (with three updates since release and a fourth on its way out soon). However, I think I’ve gotten most of the errors and bugs ironed out by now. Hopefully, that means I’ll soon have some time to rest a bit, after what has basically been an almost-five year non-stop development cycle.

That doesn’t mean I haven’t been working on anything else though. Some of you looking through the pages for my Patreon content may have noticed a few changes: namely, that there are now links to plaintext versions of this year’s articles. This was something I put together based on a kind fan’s suggestion to make my Patreon content more accessible for those who use screen-readers due to disability or other reasons.

Eventually, I plan on transcribing as many of the image-based articles into plaintext as possible. In the meantime, I’ll be adding plaintext transcripts for new articles, as well as on the Patreon page itself. If anyone has any further suggestions regarding this new system, I’d love to hear them, especially if it means making them more accessible or easier to read.

And of course, 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.


Lords of Infinity has a Demo!

Just one more announcement before the end of the month: I’m happy to announce that Lords of Infinity now has a free demo, covering character generation, the prologue, and the first two chapters, which comes to somewhere around 200k words worth of content.

If that sounds like too much, remember that this is about one-eighth of the entire game.

You can play the demo here.


February Update

As of today, I’ve finished all pending pre-release work on Lords of Infinity: which means all achievements, images, and additional pieces of content which I was waiting for the post-copyedit process to implement are all now in. After a few more rounds of testing, I’ll be sending it all in for publishing – which means that barring any bugs I find last minute, the build of Lords of Infinity currently on my computer is the version which will release in two weeks.

Of course, that doesn’t mean I’ll be done. After release, I’ll still be on standby to deal with new bug reports and feedback, but until then, I think I’ll have some time to myself.

In the meantime, this month’s installments of A Soldier’s Guide to the Infinite Sea, and An Adventurer’s Guide to the Fledgling Realms, are both up.


An Interview

Last month, I did an interview with Aaron Spelker of Mobile Accessible Games in advance of the upcoming release of Lords of Infinity. We talked about how I got into writing Interactive Fiction, some of the “big picture” themes I outline in the Dragoon Saga, and about parts of my creative process, as well as how easy it is for accessibility concerns (like playability for the visually-impaired) to slip under the radar of abled or mostly-abled game developers (read: me).

The interview’s up on Youtube, where you can listen to it in its entirety (so long as you don’t mind my terrible webcam picture quality and cheap microphone).

You can find Aaron on Twitter, and his Mobile Accessible Games group in Facebook. He also has a whole load of interviews with other game developers on his Youtube Channel.


Lords of Infinity has a Release Date!

At long last, after several weeks of work, I’m proud to say that Lords of Infinity now has a store page on Steam, as well as an official release date: March 2nd, 2023.

I’ve also put together a page on the website, which will also eventually link to the Steam page, as well as the other platforms it will be available on (which is to say, the iOS App Store and Google Play) when it comes out.

In the meantime, you can wishlist Lords of Infinity on Steam here.


September Update

It’s been a rough month. I’ve had Covid and dealt with some other emergencies, but in the meantime, I’ve been able to finish Lords of Infinity‘s cover art.

Here’s a preview version of it (with some cropping, reduced size and some compression):

Needless to say, this took a lot of work. I think the finished and full-sized version looks great, and I’ll be spending the next week or so cutting it up into artwork for Steam capsules and other marketing materials.

As usual, this month’s installments of A Creator’s Guide to Writing and Worldbuilding, A Soldier’s Guide to the Infinite Sea, and An Adventurer’s Guide to the Fledgling Realms, are all up.


August Update

Another busy month this time around. I’ve been working on addressing feedback for Lords of Infinity, and balancing the difficulty of the myriad subplots and story paths (there are, needless to say, a lot of them). Hopefully, once I’m finished this current raft of feedback requests, I can submit for copyediting.

Of course, that doesn’t mean my job is done. After that, I still have to do art and give the publisher enough material to do marketing support. I’m working on that as well. Hopefully, I’ll be able to show you some of the cover art I’ve been working on next month too.

There’s also another project in the pipeline, one I can’t quite talk about yet. It might be a few months before I can announce it, but needless to say, I’m very excited for it.

As usual, this month’s installments of A Creator’s Guide to Writing and Worldbuilding, A Soldier’s Guide to the Infinite Sea, and An Adventurer’s Guide to the Fledgling Realms, are all up.


July Update

It’s been a busy few weeks. I’ve spent most of it working on polishing Lords of Infinity now that it’s more or less complete. That means addressing balance issues, fixing bugs, and completing the stat and reference pages.

Hopefully, by this time next month, I’ll have it submitted for copyediting. I’m really looking forward to having it out, and I hope you’re all as excited for its impending release as I am.

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


June Update

First of all, apologies for the late update. My HDD failed on me the other week, which means this entire month has been sort of behind schedule.

That being said, that hasn’t stopped me from more or less finishing principal writing work on Lords of Infinity. From here, I plan on spending some time on polish and balance, before submitting for copy-editing and getting to work on the cover art.

And of course, June’s installments of A Creator’s Guide to Writing and Worldbuilding, A Soldier’s Guide to the Infinite Sea, and An Adventurer’s Guide to the Fledgling Realms, are all up. Some of you may notice that the art is slightly different. That’s because all of my old templates were on the failed drive, so I had to recreate them from scratch. Personally I think they look better now.