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.

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.

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.

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.

I’ve just finished the side-plot content (all 75 000 words of it) for Lords of Infinity, which means I’ve only got a few more things to tidy up (balance, reference materials, some new text additions based on player feedback) before I’m ready to submit the whole thing to the publisher. Hopefully, all of that shouldn’t take more than another two or three months.

In the meantime, May’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 now all up.

Today I’d like to talk a bit about this side content I’ve been working on. It’s gotten to well over 50 000 words all by itself, and I’m probably going to need at least another month to finish it up, so I feel like you’re all at least a little entitled to a bit of an explanation.

First of all, what it is: the side content for Lords of Infinity consists of a handful of small plots with tangential, but potentially important ramifications for the main story. Think of them like sidequests in an RPG, or a breather episode in a TV show. These side-plots are available to the player based on their choices. The Aetoria side-content, for example, is determined by the club they join when they move to the capital. Each of these side-stories explores an aspect of life as a member of the Tierran aristocracy which the main story doesn’t really have space for. They can bring additional benefits to the player later on – as well as potential complications.

I already suspect that a few of you already have a question: why bother? Why should I put time and effort into this stuff if it’s not moving the main plot along? Well, there’s a number of reasons for that:

First of all, it fleshes out the world, both by showing how the changing conditions of the world are affecting places and people the player wouldn’t otherwise see, and by allowing the player to experience some of more of the social world that surrounds the main character, both in spheres which are intended for the aristocratic classes, and those which aren’t. Each of the side-plots introduces the player to new characters, new places, and new social phenomena which make up the parts of a living, breathing, setting.

Secondly, it offers additional choices and consequences, which allow the player to affect the story in new and interesting ways. Likewise, some of the decisions which the player makes in the side content might prove to have helpful (or harmful) consequences in the main story. As a result, the world feels more connected and reactive, more real. The player gets more of a feeling that this is a world their main character actually inhabits, where even how they spend their spare time is a matter of consequence.

Thirdly, it offers more impact to certain choices which I consider a bit lacking in reactivity. While there’s already a lot of different content based around each of the five clubs in Aetoria, this new side content not only adds more, but also helps reinforce the fact that the club you join isn’t just a throw-away choice, but something which can outright determine the people you know and the things you can do.

Last of all, some of it is just fun to write, and lets players get up to all kinds of shenanigans which their characters could only get away with through the impunity that comes with high birth in a deeply unequal society.

Hopefully, when Lords of Infinity comes out in a few months, you’ll all consider it as worth the effort as I have.

In the meantime, this month’s 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 now all up.