Progress Report 2024.01.04.: Roadmaps, A Trilogy & Writing Continues

Hi friends,

A few updates.

2024 Roadmap

The 2024 Wayfarer Roadmap has been released; you can read it here. This is an estimated schedule for the coming year; as always, development is difficult to predict. Finishing both Episode 3 and Episode 4 this year is an ambitious goal, and I am going to stick to it as much as I can. I don’t expect everything to go to plan, and I am planning on doing a six-month update in July to account for things reshuffling. It’s hard to say how things are going to go until I’m in the middle of it.

Game Re-Structuring

I will be doing a formal post on this sometime this month or in February, but the next major change is that I am adjusting Wayfarer’s outline and structure. The game has always been conceptualized as 3 acts and 15 episodes. While that story structure is still at its roots, it’s very apparent now that this is far too much story to be contained to a single game.

So, I am breaking it into a trilogy.

I have had this idea for a while, but I have held off on doing anything about it because of technical issues. Because of the way the story builds on itself, I need to ensure that continuity (including small details like the player character’s inventory!) is preserved across all three games. This means having some kind of save import and world state system. This is doable in Twine, but I haven’t tested it yet.

This is tentatively the new structure for the Wayfarer trilogy:

Game 1: Title TBA

• Prologue
• Act 1: Episode 1, Episode 2, Episode 3
• Act 2: Episode 4, Episode 5
• Act 3: Episode 6, Episode 7
• Epilogue

Game 2: Title TBA

• Prologue
• Act 1: Episode 8, Episode 9
• Act 2: Episode 10
• Act 3: Episode 11
• Epilogue

Game 3: Title TBA

• Prologue
• Act 1: Episode 12
• Act 2: Episode 13, Episode 14
• Act 3: Episode 15
• Epilogue

With this change, I will be looking into getting new cover art that is more specific to the first game’s events and brainstorming titles. I am also considering commissioning art for each act that will display behind the episode summary when you start a new episode (currently it is a black background).

Game Updates

I am back to writing as of today. I left off in a pretty good place in December and closed out some variations I had been struggling with for a while. The next stage of Route 1 is pretty straightforward and I’m finally excited about continuing it.

As always, thank you for your continued support! 💖