Monday, December 17, 2018

Open Sorcery: Jingle BEL/S

A game about technology, magic, and presents.

It's been one year since the events of Open Sorcery and BEL/S is experiencing her first holiday season as a sapient AI.

Barter with disgruntled elves.

Incinerate deadly holiday cards.

Protect your network.

Dream.

And get presents for all your friends.

Jingle BEL/S is available as DLC for the original game on Steam.

Tuesday, December 11, 2018

Jingle BEL/S Release Date: December 15th

I'm releasing Jingle BEL/S on the 15th, this Saturday.

I just put out a minor update to Open Sorcery in anticipation of releasing Jingle BEL/S.

More save slots.

Also, updated the backend, so maybe that will help with the Windows 7 problems?

Finger crossed.

Saturday, December 8, 2018

Release Dates Are Hard

HOLY MOSES but my life has been a bit of nonsense lately.

Okay. I'm married. I moved to another state. I have steady freelance work to support myself. And I finished Jingle BEL/S.

I'm so close to having a stable life again, I can taste it.

I am trying to figure out when to release Jingle BEL/S.

Thematically it should be December, but that's so soon and all the big boys are doing their things and I'd get buried in the Steam store. And I made it as an apology for not making the April release of Sea++, so maybe April? But I don't know if I can bear to sit on it that long.

I'm bad at marketing guys. I'm supposed to have been promoting it for a year at this point. Oh well. I'll decide soon.

Here's a list of all the achievements currently in game to give you a sense of it:

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Jingle BEL/S Achievements

Smashing Christmas Cheer
Learn about Marley and Grinchy.

Baruch Atah Adonai
Light the menorah every night.

I Am Here To Revive
Save all the spirits from the Hollow.

We Are Here To Protect
Fully protect your network from the Hollow.



Mini Me
Revive the Angel of Death with a gift that it decides to keep.

Cuddle Puddle
Give everyone a hug for Christmas.

Good Presents
Give everyone good or better presents.

Perfect Presents
Give everyone their best present.

Gilding the Lily
Make someone's perfect present EVEN BETTER.
Hint: Show the pocket watch to Macabe.

Foreshadowing Unlocked
Give everyone their best present and reach Dreaming 100.


Dreamed of Decker
Complete Decker's dream.

Dreamed of Janet
Complete Janet's dream.

Dreamed of Sarah
Complete Sarah's dream.

Dreamed of Pyreworm
Complete Pyreworm's dream.

The Best Dream
Complete Mrs. Best's dream.

Hotmail
Mail yourself something from a dream.

Binary Evocator Leery of Stairs
Make it to the Cafeteria in Sarah's dream.

Irritate Smokey
Encounter and upset Smokey the Bear in Pyreworm's dream.

i have no mouth and i'm actually pretty chill about it
Build yourself without a mouth in Decker's dream.

Open The Closet
Find Janet's father in her dream.

Sweet Dreams
Get help with your nightmares.

Expert Dreamer
Reached 100 Dreaming.

Thursday, October 11, 2018

Almost Done!

I am almost done with the first draft of Jingle Bells.

I finished all the nights. Now I'm polishing and adding achievements.

Things I did today:

Let you visit embittered elves to trade Sapphic Poetry for Sapphic Porn
Added Janet visiting Mrs. Best.
Implemented a piece of dawn.
Put a frame around a photo.

In life news: wedding is done. Getting ready to move!

Tuesday, August 21, 2018

EMERGENT New Player Drive

I'm doing a new player drive in my weird, experimental online tactical LARP called EMERGENT.

The intro will be a new-player focused event on August 22nd, starting at 8PM EST/5PM PST.

Happens here

You don't need to have signed up for the game--you can just drop into Discord and play. :)

Wednesday, July 18, 2018

Four Walls

Work continues apace on Jingle BEL/S.

(Despite the interference of buying a house, planning a wedding, and working a pretty intense freelance position.)

Night three and three dreams are done.

The dreams are a WAY bigger deal in this game.

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Fun thing I'm doing!

It's called FOUR WALLS.

It's a LARP set in an Escape the Room.

I'm not making it--my friends Josh and Shoshana are making it.

But I AM running their remote-play option.

So if you'd like to wrestle with a kaleidoscope of eldritch horror over Discord for a couple of hours, consider signing up for Remote Play!

(Alternatively, if you're in the NYC area, you can come in person! My understanding is it's gonna be like Sleep No More but with more plot and interaction.)

Four Walls Website

Monday, June 25, 2018

Super Gay Techno Fire Lesbians

So in Jingle BEL/S, I briefly considered opening the option for romance between BEL/S and Pyreworm.

I changed my mind, since they're technically about one year old and neither of them really expressed interest in it.

But this exchange came out of it, and it made me happy:

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BEL/S: Most of the literature I have reviewed implies one of us should be male.

Decker: No.

Janet: Don't worry about that.

Decker: You're fine.

Janet: If you feel like girls, you should both stay girls.

Decker: Yeah.

Janet: Be super gay techno fire lesbians.

Decker: Yes.

Wednesday, May 30, 2018

First Day

Finished the first day of Jingle BEL/S.

It's really lovely to come back to old friends and continue their stories.

The game is shaping up to be simpler than OS on a macro level, which is the intent, but also kind of annoys me, since I really LIKED the branching narrative/puzzle structure of OS.

BEL/S has been around for a while at this point and isn't developing as dramatically that she incorporates different elements and spikes in power on a day-to-day basis. So there aren't different paths based on how she develops.

There are a few different paths developing based on simple decision making.

And, of course, what presents she finds.

Wednesday, May 16, 2018

Open Sorcery DLC

Just finished putting the final polish on Sea++ before putting it to sleep for a little while.

Now working on some original Open Sorcery DLC.

It's gonna be called:

Jingle BEL/S

BEL/S has been aware for a year, and is about to experience her first holiday season.

It's a game about magic, technology, and presents.

Monday, April 30, 2018

Contract Work

So I have very good but slightly inconvenient news!

I have been hired to do contract work as a narrative designer!

It's for an exciting project that I can say absolutely nothing about.

This is good for me because it means I'm getting consistently paid for doing remote, creative work. Which is the best.

This is long-term good for Open Sorcery, because it makes it increasingly unlikely that I will have to go back to a distracting 9-5.

This is short-term HIGHLY INCONVENIENT for Open Sorcery, as it means I now have three major projects competing for my attention.

(Open Sorcery: Sea++, EMERGENT, and Mystery Contract Work, for those keeping score)

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I'm probably going to have to push back the release of Sea++ again because of the added workload.

But I feel bad about doing that, so what I'll probably do is create some DLC for the original Open Sorcery and release it when I WOULD HAVE released Sea++.

So there will be some sort of new content for the OS universe in April 2019.

And I will try to get better about the planning fallacy.

Monday, March 26, 2018

Geisthome

Working on Geisthome in Sea++!

It's pretty elaborate, since it's one of the main areas you have to go through, and the last area before you rise from the Deep Web to the Web, and emotionally important to the main character.

I've implemented an AI for a troll whose house you have to go through to reclaim one of your memories. You can deal with him by avoiding him, poisoning him, or convincing him to be a pescatarian.

I've just about finished that and am moving on to sea-monster fishing and a Dark Reef of coral and monsters you can collect to do alchemy.

Tuesday, January 23, 2018

Upkeep

This month was mostly catch up and clean up work in the Deep Web.

I did a number of interesting things:

- Implemented a puzzle for fixing a neon sign.
- Implemented a puzzle for luring a shy fairy child out from under a table.
- Bug-checked an area called Awash in Gibbering Madness.
- Implemented assembling a Prophesy of Light.
- Fixed various problems with helping the Lost Colony of Roanoke settle on the ocean floor.
- Implemented how to murder people.
- Implemented adopting an octopus.

Tuesday, January 16, 2018

Word Count

I keep all of the versions of Sea++ saved, in case I need to go back to an earlier version.

I just reached version 100.

It's about a third done, and already 80,000 words.

Open Sorcery was about 61,000 words, and a lot simpler.

So big.