#thornewood

I hope you're having a good day 😊

I cant remember if you've spoken about this or not but when Valerian uses their magic I know their hair grows as a side effect (for lack of a better word) but does the speed it grows change depending on the power output?

Like if Valerian is doing something very small would it grow a small amount or would it just go from a pixie to waist length? 😆

Thank you so much! Im so excited to see more of Thornewood !!

I guess that's one way to look at it - I tend to view it as amount but "amount per unit of time" is probably the most correct view (so speed and length).

Ultimately it's the same thing.

But yes, either way, the amount their hair grows (or speed that it grows) is proportional to the magic output. The first time they use magic in the game, it grows a lot so they are just full bog-witch mode when the Huntsmen find them.

But that's not the way it always is.

When they are working on potions on a day to day basis, their magic output is small enough that I would say their hair probably just grows about 2 - 3 times the norm (maybe a little more.) But you aren't going to notice that someone's hair grew a 1.5 mm a day instead of .5 mm that day.

But you might notice that, over time, their hair grows quite fast (and Valerian actually says early on in the game that they kept their hair in that long braid because it grew so fast that trying to keep it short was pointless due to the sheer amount of time they spent studying and practicing magic.

If they do a small amount or even a moderate amount of magic, their hair growth isn't as noticeable too. 3cm is an insane amount of hair growth to have in seconds but you're still not going to necessarily notice it straight away and be all "OMG UR HAIR GREW."

And then there is the significant magic use where their hair just breaks containment and goes to their knees...to the ground...wherever.

Tumblr Devlog 05/07

Progress:

Zen progress 

Finished Ch 2

Finished Ch 3

Started Ch 4

Total word count is ~ 555000 words

New BGs received and coded

Worked on Julian's outline

Some sprite staging

Apparently in June I wrote just over 69,000 words. I've been pushing myself to try to write 2000 words a day (though my minimum goal is a bit lower) so I can capitalise on the free time I have for the next two months, which will be going away when September hits).

As has been true lately, my main focus is writing so I'm not really doing any particular art or anything at the moment, just receiving art from freelancers.

I have received some new BG art but am waiting on loads more still. I think I need at least 6 more for the demo. So we are making progress; it's just very slow. 

On the writing front Zen's route is well under way at this point and I'm focusing on trying to get it done by the end of August.

I did record some short videos walking through some of the game features. I've talked about the features a lot - partially because I'm just kind of happy about some of them and also because...I don't have a demo to show off yet as I wait for art...for it.

I apologise for the squeakiness in my voice as the first video starts. That was me being very timid and unused to recording myself and trying to make myself super tiny so no one could perceive me. In a video. That I chose to record.

Just imagine me starting out like 10 inches tall and hiding behind my coffee mug, then growing to my normal size as I start rambling, allowing my voice to descend from the stratosphere somewhat.

(because I forgot to show the glossary after I already said I would)

Next Couple of Weeks Development-wise:

Writing. That's it. 

I may do some scattered coding and things as usual but it's just writing. It's the writing doldrums and it's going to last into 2027. I am probably not going to take much of a break from writing before the end of the year as I really want to get as much of the draft done as possible.

When Stars Collide updates:

When Stars Collide finally went live on Steam and I am taking part in a cool cross promo event, which I've already posted about.

My brain still fights over Corvin and Marc, what’s better than 1 husband it’s 2 husbands am I right 😏

okay but also WSC is so good!! Ugh, I’m like salivating but for reading every time I open the game. The best thing ever. I’m so excited for Thornewood too!!

I’m realizing I have something feral inside me for the blonde men you write. Corvin, Marc, Magnus, Glen..

I believe I saw a blonde man™️ in Thornewood but I haven’t been keeping up to date so we shall see if there’s another man to sink my feral teeth into!

Anyways!! I just wanted to say I love your writing and your games so much, they make me so happy!!

Thank youuuu! I'm so happy you like When Stars Collide. I enjoyed my stay on the sci-fi side of things but am really happy to move fully back into fantasy for a while!

There are two blonde LIs in Thornewood (moving from 0 blondes to multiple again)!

Zen:

And Julian who is arguably more of a strawberry blonde since his hair has a rosy tint to it and looks QUITE PINK compared to Zen's platinum. LoL

Tumblr Devlog 21/06

Progress:

So Everett's route is done now and I went through Zen's outline to flesh it out and clean it up because I decided I was going to do his route next. 

And I started working on Zen's route though I'm still in chapter one.

The word count of Thornewood right now is just over 520,000 words at the moment. I'd like to say this at least half written but realistically it can't possibly be half written because there are now 8 LIs and I've just started #4. 

So.

ANYWAY. I am still slowly acquiring art and I'm doing a lot of writing. And doing art as well...here and there - Mostly sprite variations and stuff.

Of course, the UI and stuff is already coded though I keep running into little bugs here and there as you do.

Here is a little look at the character creator just running through the options the game has. The sprite bodies work basically the same way as Thornewood though I'm not doing the colour slider this time for recolouring due to certain limitations with it.

As you can see there are some minor clothing differences across the bodies - like with all my games the MC will have a variety of outfits and most likely the outfits will stay largely similar across the bodies. I cannot guarantee that will be the case. 

For instance, there is a formal party the MC attends - in a pseudo-Victorian setting that would normally mean a difference in attire and I'm not totally sure how I will handle that yet. But this gives you a rough idea.

You do get the option later to cut Valerian's hair shorter - above the shoulder. I may show how that looks at some point later on. Valerian's hair length changes a lot due to their magic but if you choose to play with short hair, regardless of when their magic causes their hair to grow, they will always trim it back to above their shoulders.

Otherwise they trim it back to that waist-length braid.

Like in WSC you cannot change the MC's last name. Their name is based off the scientific name for lamb's lettuce (valeriana locusta) and this is something several characters point out (and also is a callback to their inspiration of Rapunzel) so at least part of the name has to remain static.

Like WSC you can pick body, pronouns, and other terms independently of each other. Overall the customisation is somewhat of a blend of Gilded Shadows and When Stars Collide.

Hair colours, this time around, I kind of went a little nonstandard with the steel-grey and rose-red but it just kind of felt appropriate somehow but I did put some typical colours in as well - the blonde, brown, and black. So I think it balances out.

Next Couple of Weeks Development-wise:

I've started Zen's route of course and that will be my primary focus. Anything else I work on - art, coding, etc - is kind of extra at this point.

I can't remember if I've talked about the demo release here. I think I have but if I haven't...

The demo can't release until I have the remaining BG art and there are still quite a few so I can't imagine the demo going out before September at the earliest. 

I may release a non-playable teaser of the prologue (a video basically) before the full demo goes out. We'll see.

For now the game is in development limbo but I shall be continuing to update you on progress. 

A little WSC update:

If you have been waiting for WSC to appear on Steam, please just know that Valve's review team is working very hard to ensure that WSC will not overly shock or harm anyone with its semi-explicit content and implied nudity.

Between allowing games where the goal is to use mind powers to manipulate women into sex, and games where you can brutally murder people (or be brutally murdered on screen with blood everywhere!), they are truly hard at work to make sure that visual novels with minor references to alcohol and those pesky love scenes don't sneak past with multiple full reviews that require us to submit and re-submit builds that allow them to check every little thing including content that doesn't have any sexually charged moments at all!

Admirable. (oﾟvﾟ)ノ

For the non-sarcastic version - we're just trying to get through the steam review and keep hitting roadblocks regarding the mature content. As per usual.

Tumblr Devlog 07/06

Hi everyone. I lied about Everett.

He is definitely going to end up at around 135k for his draft.

WHAT AN OPENER. ╰(*°▽°*)╯

Let's backtrack. Two weeks ago, I naively thought that Everett's rough draft would be around 125k words long. Yeah. Well, Everett is at 122k and I have 2.5 chapters left. VN chapters tend to be quite a bit longer than book chapters owing to the branching so yeah. I'm thinking around 15k left which means 135k for the rough draft.

Yeah.

I was correct that I'm close to the end of his route by today, but not quite there yet. Last post, I was on Chapter 9, I think. I'm currently at Chapter 13. You know. Progress.

Anyway! Here are some screencaps of the choice menu with the "in game guide/hint system" implemented!

I still can't do too many screen caps of game and character moments yet because frankly....I don't have a lot of the main game BGs. I have...two rooms and one street. But here are some anyway.

I love having Zen and Callis on screen together. Just makes me smile.

ANYWAY.

I'm getting art...slowly. BGs are going to take a while. I was really hoping I could release the demo for Thornewood by September. At the pace I'm currently getting BGs, that is not going to happen. When I first started getting them, the turnaround was a little faster so I was hopeful but it's just kind of slowed to a crawl unfortunately - I think the artists are just super busy suddenly. And early game introduces the central location of the story which has a lot of BGs associated with it - it's the shop you see in the above screen caps. Even just in chapter one I'm missing...at least three backgrounds that are essential to the scenes because this building has a lot of different rooms in it.

And you don't even meet everyone until Chapter two of the game...which has another new environment that most of the chapter takes place in.

So the prologue, Ch 1, and Ch 2 are the LEAST amount of content I think a demo would need for this game. And really, I think I need Chapter 3 as well to really drive home what kind of story it's going to be...which has an additional 5 BGs or something? So yeah.

It's just one of those games.

At this rate, game may be half written by the time the demo even comes out. Given the size of this game, that may not be a bad thing though. Because it's...another behemoth.

Dammit Esh, why do you always write long games?!...you might be wondering.

Let me pause here and say that...some people on the internet are incapable of seeing others exist and talk about craft while also 'creating imperfectly' - so if you make stuff and you dare to feel anything but humbled by and ashamed of flaws in your work, raising your head even slightly above the muck to talk as if you know something...means these people MUST show up and remind you that your work sucks actually...

I just want to say that I know my work has flaws and issues. I know I'm not a perfect writer. So if you are one of the above people and you're gasping in horror that I'm about to talk about writing stuff...you can just go about your business (why are you even reading my blog? LoL)

If you don't like writer talk or you find it insufferable, you can skip the rest of this post 'cause I wanna ramble a bit and this is my blog, so I'm gonna. =)

So for everyone else who is curious why I like to write long games...here is my reasoning:

I like writing long form fiction (IE something like a novel in length). That's it. That's the reason. Long form fiction is just the structure I prefer.

Well, I also like exploring a lot of LIs - I clearly have a preference for games that explore 6-9 love interests. I think it's fun. That combo...means big games.

One of the weird things about the typical visual novel structure is that when you have individual routes you are essentially bundling multiple story lines into a single product. On top of that, those story lines then have internal branching. If you strip away that branching, depending on the linear length of each complete storyline, a visual novel isn't just "A Story" it's a bundle of short stories, a bundle of novellas, or a bundle of novels.

This is why it can be so frustrating when you write a 200,000 word visual novel and people call it short. 200,000 words is a lot of words! But if you have 6 LIs and you factor in branching, the linear story line for each LI may be the length of a short story so the "time to credits" (IE the time it takes between clicking 'new game' and reaching the end one time) can feel quite short. It's not that the game is short, it's the experience of one story line of the game is like reading a short story.

Meanwhile if you have a bundle of the equivalent of six - nine novels, it's going to be a lot of words that sound like a really horrifying number. Especially sci-fi and fantasy. These novels are often 90,000 - 150,000 words long (sometimes way longer - these are modest numbers tbh!). And if you have 6 of those, you're looking at at least 550,000 words of linear storyline. And then on top of that, you have the branching and endings and variations.

If you're writing long form fiction AND multiple routes AND branching, you inherently have very high word counts.

And it's not even about high word counts being better or more valid. They're not. Short form fiction and Mid-length fiction (IE short stories and novellas) are as valid and as entertaining and heartfelt as novels. They just serve different purposes and have different narrative structures.

My games being "long" isn't because they're more valid, better, whatever - plenty of people do not like "long games." The length is just a side effect of me liking the structure of long form fiction and liking to write a lot of LIs - and ending up with something that is basically an entire book series bundled into a single experience.

It's really popular for people to claim that long VNs are long due to "intentionally padding out the word count." But realistically the superfluous content or sometimes wordy exposition (that nearly ALL writers sometimes have in their work) wouldn't budge the word count that much. If you come across a novel where, 10 times, read a page you consider filler, it feels like SO MUCH FILLER but realistically it's 3000 - 4000 words. That's not a small chunk, BUT. Those 4000 words are not why a 150,000 word novel is "long". Even if you remove them, the word count does budge that much.

"A lot" is relative and sometimes it's just a feeling. Some people play my games and think it's "too much blah, blah" (which is still one of my favourite comments I've ever gotten!)

But usually with VNs that high word count is coming mostly from the number routes and the level of branching. If you strip out the choices and you include the common route content for the story lines in GS - the start of the adventure to the end of it - each love interest's complete "time to credits" storyline was only about 95000 words - which is the length of a YA science fiction novel (not even a very long one). 

That isn't to say that my stories don't have exposition or superfluous stuff I could cut - they totally do. I always think this when watching LPs or streams - "Oh, I could have cut some of this dialogue." But realistically even if I cut 20k per route (which would not have been possible), Gilded Shadows still would have been 850,000 words. Cutting even 180,000 words of filler would not have made it a "short" or even "medium length" game.

Like all writers, I can get wordy (I mean...look at this post...*gestures at it*), I can overuse certain phrases (if you know, you know). I include scenes in my VNs that I might not include in a traditional novel because of game and narrative design reasons. But GS isn't long because I intentionally padded it and Thornewood isn't going to be long because of that either. It's just a big game with a lot of LIs and a lot of branching. Gilded Shadows had something like 350,000 words of just choice and ending variations.

VNs are so complicated because you have the total word count and then you have the individual route word count, the total storyline word count, the linear word count...there are so many different to structurally break down where all those words live and how players experience them.

But my primary focus tends to be the storyline and what the player experiences as they try to read these individual story lines, because my goal is to write a story line that feels like reading a good novel. And that is, for me, going to mean around 90000 - 120000 words of linear storyline per LI.

And when I have 6 love interests, or 8 love interests, or 9 love interests...that results in a chunky game, every time.

ANYWAY RAMBLE OVER.

Next Couple of Weeks Development-wise:

I'm basically focusing on writing the game with some coding of demo stuff here and there as I wait for the rest of the art.

By my next post here on tumblr, I should have Everett's route done. I've been bouncing back and forth on who to write next, and I still haven't really decided. I think it's going to be either Kiran or Zen. And I'm leaning towards Zen. I've done three routes with fairly slow-paced romances - although different styles of slow. Everett's romance develops at a leisurely pace, but there's actually a lot of flirting and affection through the route. Which isn't necessarily how Ivailo and Callis flow.

But I still kind of want to do an LI whose romance I know will move faster. I know that includes Zen, but I'm not sure how Kiran's romance will flow. I definitely think Ferran is a whole other beast. Allen and Julian...are...idk. They're not outlined enough for me to know yet. Kiran, though is going to be a "feel it out as I go" sort of situation. Hence, leaning towards Zen.

I'm eager to buy and play Thornewood whenever it releases. <3

It's not that! The real issue is that on the dev end it's usually unclear what the tone and motivation of a message is and it's easy to sound irritated even if we're just trying to be up front.

The lead in was mostly just in case I sounded cranky ha ha. Your message was perfectly polite and I wasn't annoyed really. In any case I got to fill out the square in my silly game dev bingo card that I made in my long term dev journal. Mwa ha ha

In seriousness, I think that being curious about the release and pay structure is valid. I think that "Will it be free" does feel a little loaded for developers sometimes so "What will be the pay structure and release structure?" would feel more neutral to me (it assumes there will be a pay structure of some kind and allows for that structure to be free or PWYW). Other devs might not agree but personally I'd much prefer this question!