Progress Report 2024.08.09: Episode 3 Finale & Other News

Hi all, 

I hope you are all having a great August! I am back from holiday. The trip was very relaxing, and I got to see a lot of family I don’t get to visit regularly. Having a reset was very good for me since I feel less burned out and ready and excited to work on Wayfarer. I did catch a cold on the plane ride back and I’m recovering from that, but otherwise I am feeling pretty positive and optimistic about Wayfarer and I’m really eager to dive back into things. 

This week I have been progressing the Episode 3 finale. Coming back to branching dialogue and action after a break is never easy and it does take a few days to sink back into it (a lot of reading the previous work to refresh myself on the trajectory, double-checking routes and consequences, cross-referencing different outcomes—keeping on top of all the little details that make the game replayable). I’ve gotten about 8,000 words done this week and need to clean up the branch I’m currently on and merge it with another branch before continuing. 

Because the game isn’t where I hoped it would be when I did the 2024 roadmap in January, I am going to be revisiting it this month and releasing an updated version this month. Episode 3 was originally estimated to be finished this summer and Episode 4 in progress. You can expect an update sometime next week with the new plan. 

I am going to start releasing sneak peeks again for the Recruit tier and up. These will be posted every other week on Fridays, starting on August 16. Because I am drafting the end of Episode 3, sneak peaks will contain major spoilers. Depending on your spoiler stance or if you haven’t finished playing the current Episode 3 alpha all the way to the end, you may want to ignore them. 

Additionally, I am hoping to release a new alpha patch sometime this month to fix ongoing and recurring bugs. The public build also needs to be updated. SugarCube (the story format the game is built in) released an updated version in July and I am currently waffling about whether to use the update or not. The changes break many custom themes and macros developed on the previous version of SugarCube, I risk breaking the whole game. I’m not sure if the updates are worthwhile enough to justify spending a couple weeks resolving errors caused by the new version just to make use of a few new features and to get rid of depreciated code. My gut instinct is to leave it be—you don’t always need the most recent version of things, and the game will still work fine as is. Updating the engine can wait when I’m working on Game 2, whenever that happens to be. 

I am slowly picking away at some short stories for bonus content, but I can’t estimate when they will be available to read. The goal is sometime this month, but that is very optimistic with the amount of work I have to do on the Episode 3 finale. 

Additionally, I am in the stages of planning a community event for September. September is Wayfarer’s anniversary month (the public build launched on September 9, 2021) and since I didn’t organize anything last year, I want to do something special for it this year. This is a public event, not just for Patrons, but I will be releasing more news on that in the coming weeks. 

Thank you all so much for your support! If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to let me know below. 💖