Q&A answers

What inspired you to do a game based on Egypt?

I was always interested in history ever since I was a child. Mostly about ancient history, but I can get invested in new subjects rather quickly. Ancient Egypt has been a favorite subject of mine and this actually isn't my first time writing about this era. I have two paper books already, a third one half-finished, that take place in Ancient Egypt. They are a lot more historically correct with actual historical figures for characters, and the story is quite different too, but neither of those are in English, and I have evolved so much more as a writer since I made those, so don't ask me to show them lol. Anyway, I had the chance to practice English in the past few years and now I arrived to a certain point in my life where I was comfortable writing in English. I also gained some valuable experience coding a game like this, so I felt ready to start working on a bigger project, hence Weeping Gods was born.

Fortunately, nearly all of the research work has been done already in the past 15 years when I started working on those other novels, so I already had a good understanding of the historical era. I collected many books during the years too that are invaluable as a resource when I write. I also reused some of the characters from my old novels under different names, slightly different personalities, and with new background stories, so the skeleton of the game was built up quite quickly. The story of Weeping Gods however is completely new and many details still change as I write, which is always very exciting to experience!

Is there an origin that you struggle writing more than the others or do they all come to you fairly easily?

They are all a struggle to start when I'm not in their mindset. It's quite hard to keep 4 different characters in mind at the same time when writing, so when I start a scene, I usually choose one at random and just keep that one in mind as I work through the scene. Then, when I'm ready to take a break, I go back and read it again with another character in mind, see if it still fits. If it doesn't, I code in different flavor texts.

For now, when I write, I don't go over all of the scenes, so it can happen that certain character details get forgotten. I will for example do some editing on the chapter 2 and 3 scenes next week, read them again properly with different MCs, fix bugs and errors, and see if I should add more flavor text or more variations based on the different characters.

My general practice is to have 4 different MCs, one for each origin, all of them with different personalities and appearances. For example, my go-to captain character is a tall 35+ year-old veteran guy with a gruff personality who likes to swear a lot and is more practical minded. On the other hand, my noble is nonbinary and more sensitive and squeamish. My priest is a 26-year-old woman who wishes she had stayed at home because she is not cut out for this type of field work. And my thief is a young, small, hot-headed dumbass.

They all exist in the game at the same time, and when you play, the scenes have to fit all of them. None of the MC's dialogues and actions should feel out of character, no matter who you play as. It is very hard to balance, and I won't lie, it is a struggle, but it's a challenge that I enjoy tremendously. This is one of the reasons why I decided that I won't have the typical personality stats in the game. Instead, I included more general ones that can influence your character a bit, but the more personality-heavy responses and actions are always a choice in the game where you can simply pick the one that fits your character in your mind. The oral responses will not track. The actions will.

If you could romance any of your characters from this IF, which one would it be? 

Oof, hard question… I'm not sure. They all have qualities that I like but many of them are really fucked up lmao. I think I would get along very well with Narmer because our personalities are quite similar but he works too much and I do too, so that wouldn't be a good match. I would enjoy bantering with Qenna but Qenna has too many problems for a healthy relationship. Zaia and I both don't talk much, so we would just sit in silence most of the time. Not very fun. Tabiry likes being outside a lot and do lots of physically active things, which would be mentally tiring for me. And Ahmose is too young.

If Qenna manages to clean up their act and get their life back on track, then I would choose Qenna. Or Ahmose, if they were 10 years older.

Jeez, I'm very picky… Good thing I'm already married lol.

RO with the fattest ass pls this is important information 🫡

(I laughed so hard at this :'D ) Okay, you can headcanon this away. I will not write detailed essays about their asses, unfortunately. But… in my imagination, it might either be Narmer or Tabiry. None of them are fat, but Narmer has muscles, including on his ass. Tabiry too. I imagined Qenna as more flat. M!Qenna has a better ass than f!Qenna because he used to work out more. F!Qenna is quite thin. Zaia is also on the thinner side. Ahmose has a very nice athletic body, so they could be a good candidate too. They are quite proportional, but they have much less body fat than Narmer. In 15 years, Ahmose would probably win the contest.

However… if Ebo enters the contest too as a possible future semi-romance-option, then he will win. Easily. In every case.