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So I just finished giving my website an overhaul and filling it with promo materials for my game. I'd appreciate some feedback, especially on the promo stuff, since I need to go shamelessly shill it on reddit and wherever else in the near future.

http://www.projectbc.net

The basic layout itself is a WordPress theme, and my willingness to change it goes as far as minor CSS edits. I'm aware that the site is slow to render HTML (probably my host is fishy), but if you spot any other issues or have any other input, I'd appreciate it if you'd point them out!

If anyone is interested, I'm also happy to answer any questions about the development of the game. I personally am responsible for the writing, background art, character animation, and some of the programming, and I'd be happy to expound on any of these topics.

LOL, I literally just looked it up via link on your profile. 

My first question: How far are you into the story?

I'm on the sixth draft, which god help me will be the last draft. It's basically done. I need to finish writing the choices and dead ends (maybe a few thousand words), fix up some minor issues around consistency/pacing, and do line edits, and then I'm shipping it off to my editor. Hoping I'll have that finished in a couple weeks, but I've been dragging my heels over the drafting for months, so who knows.

Well, at least you've made a good effort. The art looks priceless. Who is the artist?

The character artist is Kate Holden, whose website is here: http://www.kateholdenart.com

I really like the style and writing of the story. All in all, how many choices do you feel there are?

Thank you! I've been busting my ass over this project (seriously, ask anyone who has heard me crying about it), and I think it's coming together well.

There are a total of six choices over a playtime of 2-3 hours. Three of them lead to dead ends, and the other three determine the ending, of which there are two. So it's basically linear. Not exactly groundbreaking branching, but I believe in writing a good story once instead of writing a mediocre story a bunch of times.

It'll be cool to read. If you can, when you release it it'd be great if you could find a way to notify me.

Sure thing! I'm glad you're interested.

What kind of magic does the protagonist use? A kind of "Wizard spells Harry Potter oh my" or a "level 5 demon summon"?

My setting has different flavors of sorcery, and she practices the law and order kind. She has two main powers she uses in the story. One is making unbreakable contracts with clients on behalf of her employer, and these impose an inescapable compulsion on the signees to fulfill the terms to the best of their abilities. The contract can also be invoked with legalese for an extra magic power boost. The other power she uses is metal control, which she does mainly through making it malleable. This is more useful than it sounds, because it leads to applications like turning bullets into paintballs when they hit you and making a knife someone is trying to stab you with have the consistency of butter.

Okay, that's awesome.

Does she favor the pistol, or does guns make a heavy influence?

She uses whatever gun is appropriate for the situation. She has an SMG and a carbine in addition to the pistol. She also has a sword, which is more appropriate than a gun for killing certain kinds of monsters.

Awesome. :D

Oh hai there, I see we meet again. I love visual novel style games so I'm really interested in what you're working on currently.

 

Hey again, and I'm glad you're interested!

Whenever you pop into the hideout again, indulge Axiom in story talk. No amount of questions will satiate her lust.

Ooooh, is that so? Well then I'll be sure to return back to the hideout soon. Very interested in being enlightened. 

It's good to finally see something come out of Axiom's many bitter moments of anguish as she works her ass off to get it done. Anyway, the finished (or almost finished) product looks spectacular, so great job. Can't wait to play it.

Thanks! Yes, I too am glad to see it shaping up after many bitter moments of anguish. I feel like my life satisfaction is going to improve 500% once I finally finish the fucking writing, which I hope very much will be in the near future. I might get mired in line edits for an indeterminate period of time, but I'm gonna try to get them done speedily.

What a coincidence; I just remembered I had a wordpress site that I made back in March.

Except, y'know, it's not a promo site for a game. It still uses the wordpress domain, as well. It's just a blog (that's extremely barren) that will barely include anything about my personal life, aside from my view on recent events and a peak into my surreal humor.

Digression aside...

That site's impressive. As for the games, I like the art style. I like low fantasy, so I'll probably enjoy The Devil's Broker. As for Vacant Sky... It'll be interesting to see a game set before the apocalypse, rather than during or after it. So yeah, I look forward to playing both.

Wordpress is actually great. I'm a web developer in my day job, and I quite enjoyed not having to touch any code for a change. It was very easy to put the site together.

VS is an action-RPG in Unreal Engine. Also making 3D games is hard and it's been in development hell for a while, but we're hoping that in the next few months we'll have some stuff to show in public. We're also talking about rebranding it in the wake of the No Man's Sky lawsuit, and also might come up with a new tagline while we're at it, so it's in flux right now hahaha.

Very nice. The site's a little slow, but it's not that bad. And the game definitely looks intriguing. Hope you'll let us all know when it's finally done!

Yeah, ergh, I'm not sure what the problem is. I want to blame the host, but other things on the box don't load slowly. It might be the theme, but it's taking 1-3 seconds just to render the HTML, which is pretty fishy. I should probably look into it at some point...

Don't worry, I'm sure you'll hear plenty about it! It turns out this hobby has consumed all my other hobbies, and I will go on at length about it given the slightest excuse.