NYD Progress Report 2/29/24

OK, so I said in a previous progress report that I'd let you know what my estimated release date is for NYD chapter 4 based on how far I've gotten into Act II. I actually made a lot of progress this month. So much so that I needed to take a quick break to recharge my creative batteries over this past week. I'm about halfway through the entire chapter (I think). Over the past week, I've had some cool ideas for some "cut scenes" and some revelations as well. 

As it stands, I feel confident I will be done with this by the end of April. That's not much of a holiday release. Maybe I could try for Earth Day (4/20)? Arbor Day (4/26)? Maybe Star Wars Day (5/4)? Cinco de Mayo? Who knows? I actually feel more optimistic about reaching my original Easter (3/31) release date goal, but at the same time, I don't want to rush and put out sub-par material.  There's a LOT going on in chapter 4 and I want to make sure I get it all in there correctly.

My new-found choice making skills are being put to good use. I'm trying to be tasteful with them and not have arbitrary choices in the game just for the sake of having them. They will mainly fall into one of three categories: Scene Skips (skips a scene), Loop-arounds (a tangent that comes back to the main story line), and Dead Ends (where your choice causes catastrophic events to happen that end the game). I haven't planned on putting very many choices in the game so far, just at key points in the story line and before certain scenes that the reader may want to skip. My main goal with these choices are to give it the feeling of the old Choose Your Own Adventure books that I read as a kid, using the same types of ramp-ups to the choices and the same types of endings if that is what the choice led to. I hope I do at least a passable job.

That's it for now. If I have any earth-shattering breakthroughs, I'll drop you guys a line.

Thanks again for everything. Love y'all.

~ Jonsey