Extended Writing Update - First draft of the game is complete!

You heard it here first, folks! Leas: City of the Sun has a complete first draft and is 398,525 words long! I expect the final version to hit 400k ^_^

There's still editing to be done on chapters 11-13 before they're ready for alpha, but we're officially ahead of schedule! No promises, but I think we might end up having two alpha updates in July.

I've also compiled a list of edits I need to make before launching the beta, and I've begun thinking about how I'm going to schedule patreon alpha releases vs the eventual beta release. Originally I wasn't planning to release the full beta here but then I was like, wait, why wouldn't I do that? I think my brain just put alpha and beta in two different categories and didn't think more about it until now.

Anyway, I'm really liking how the story's been shaping up. I need fewer changes to earlier chapters than I feared, and I'm very happy with how the romances turned out. They did not turn out how I planned, as you know if you've seen some of my other posts 😅 The characters have minds of their own, what can I say. As far as the larger plot, I think it actually pieces together a lot more smoothly than I expected. I started this with such an expansive amount of lore that even after paring it down half a dozen or so times, I was worried it wouldn't work. But it does! And I'm so excited about it 😄

Next I'm going to take some time to play the game all the way through as a player, rather than a tester/author. It's something I did in the early days of the game constantly - but after chapter 5/6ish it just got too time-consuming and I knew I'd have to wait until later to get back to it. Up till that point the way I tested was by playing every single choice option in the game myself - every possible scenario, every combination of decisions. I'm hoping to do at least 70% of that this time, even with all the little niche items that pop up by the late chapters. Kind of like being my own beta tester before I call in the professionals ;)

This week's preview is below!

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"That's, well…" I take a quick breath, my heart picking up speed, "a very good point."

"You two are gross," Rin groans from ahead of us.

"You will only encourage them, like that," Keo comments as (keoanai_heSheThey) open(s_k) the door to the compound.