Gildedgrimoires - Under Construction

The joys of writing fantasy is nothing has the be realistic. The bane of my existence is the need to have things be accurate enough and getting nitty gritty about stuff.

Combat can be people hitting each other with sticks and vibes but I'm here trying to determine which weapons are used on horseback and how formation looks. They are fighting on the backs of dragons in a world of magic and mystery, what am I doing this to myself for? 😒

Anyways, lances are pretty cool but what else is there? From what I gather you just ram your lance and then whip out your side arm, which makes sense but also I guess I thought there'd be 30 or so different mounted weapons to choose from.

*emerges from the other room covered in blood* you should see the word document

You don't know if the ritual worked, but your code compiled, and a student is dead.

Everyone knows that the fast-track to a superstar games development career starts at the secluded Royal Highland University. But just as it seems your dreams are coming true, Simon Harcourt is found drowned in the Loch, and truths, involving chaos magic, messy relationships and psychedelic drugs are revealed.

Matrix Drowning is a WIP interactive fiction focusing on university life, romance, and an all-consuming obsession that ends in death. Think The Secret History meets Bandersnatch.

A tired bookhorse and her lovely girlfriend, the fashion horse. As a treat from my Patreon. :)

Eros and Psyche IF

TAKE MY SOUL is an 18+ IF game being written in Twine. It's a retelling of the famous story of Eros and Psyche, just... with a few new added twists and turns!

Your sisters married off quick, you didn't. It was hard, harder than necessary for your parents to marry you off. Everyone seemed to kneel at the presence of your beauty but ended up never wanting to stay long enough for something to form.

You were practically a trophy for rich nobles to flaunt around. Cupid had failed you with this one.

Until one night, you felt a prick at your side, a rush of cold air, and suddenly your life flipped upside down when your parents came back to the castle with upsetting news about the rest of your life (or maybe the end of it?)

Customize YOUR own Psyche! Play as female, male, non-binary; straight, bisexual, pansexual, gay; asexual, and even, touch-averse! What hobbies should you have? What beliefs? What religion?

Follow the way the myth is supposed to unfold, or break away and create what you think should happen. Who said the minor god needed to get the person?

Find love in Cupid, or maybe even their mom?

Play as quite literally, one of the most beautiful people roaming Earth

Deal with your two obnoxious older sisters who only want to flaunt their husbands in your face

Enrich yourself in a story filled with new paths at every page and a whole ton of flavor text!

Have the occasional switch of POV, with the starring guest of Aphrodite, the Orcale?, and even your own love interest

CUPID

The god of love, albeit a minor one, but a god nonetheless. You've never seen them, as Eros likes to stay hidden whilst casting their arrows. But, from what your tutors teach you, they have these massive angel wings that preen out whenever they get into something mischievous. Cloth wraps around their naked body, Eros doesn't leave much to the imagination. However, in some readings, Eros is depicted as a female with hip-length black hair, while in others, the male version likes to keep it cropped and out of his way.

this is a draft! more romances may be introduced in the future, but currently, im sticking with Eros

DEMO COMING MAY 2ND!

I would like to announce

That I got no writing done yesterday

BUT

I thought about writing.

*round of applause*

Seven Hard-Won Tips Specifically for Writing Interactive Fiction

This is pretty fun, putting together these lists of writing tips. Today's list is explicitly about interactive fiction.

The trick to writing great interactive fiction that anticipates, foreshadows, introduces themes early, and has interesting choices that set up later events is to *go back and rewrite the earlier chapters* after you’ve written later chapters.  That way you look like a genius who can plot things out way in advance, but in fact, you just went back and made it seem that way.  Good writing is recursive, and that’s just how it is.

I start with an outline, then I write a code skeleton, leaving blanks for the prose, and then go in and fill in the prose.  This way I’m either in code-brain or prose-writing-brain.  I don’t like switching between the two.  Then, after than phase, I go back one more time and I do the callbacks—you know.  Might the main character be wearing a feathered boa in this scene?  Here’s some custom text.  Might the main character be limping?  Here’s some more custom text.  If you do that after you write the prose, you’ll have the leisure to think of anything fun and specific you can use. 

Callbacks tell players that their choices are unique, important, memorable, and valued by the writer.  It tell them that their choices have led them down their own particular path that the writer is rewarding with unique prose.  It doesn’t have to have a stat effect or create a new fork in the narrative.  Great prose is the reward.

Find an group of alpha readers to read your work early and often and then shut up while they read it and just listen to what they say and comment.  You must resist the urge to explain because you won’t be there at everyone’s house when they are playing your game or reading your narrative.

Make rules for yourself about how you are going to name your variables.  Don’t do what I did, with a horrible blend of sometimes calling a chracter “gil” in the variables and sometimes “gilberto”; sometimes “fitz” and sometimes “fitzie”; sometimes “metvyv” and sometimes “met_tabby”—ugh!  This is self-torture.  Don’t do what I did.

Keep your initial creation of variables super organized.  Write comments in there explaining what these variables are and when you might need them.  I comment most when I am creating variables.  You might create a variable in chapter one called “mustardallergy” that you don’t need until chapter eight, so write a comment that says “variables for chapter eight” and stick that “mustardallergy” variable under it.  I didn’t do this for my first games, and I regretted it. 

Use generic variables and make your life easy.  If you are writing a scene at the racetrack, just make a “xrace” modifier and add and subtract to it willy-nilly to represent just general ups and downs of fortune.  Stub your toe?  -5 xrace.  Wear a fine hat?  +8 xrace.  Throw around some money at the bar?  +12 xrace!  Eat some bad shellfish?  -15 xrace! Then add xrace to every test.  It’s a way of tracking just the ups and downs of fortune.  You can omit it when it doesn’t make sense, but it’s just a great way to make tests and rewards and penalties cumulatively meaningful without having to have a billion variables tracking every last *reason* for the rewards and penalties.

Discover more mini-essays about writing interactive fiction, writing in general, and the process of writing the forthcoming Jolly Good series below.

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Okay now that that writing about vampires is out of the way I need to go draw them for art fight,

back to our regularly scheduled winter adventure. I gotta get back onto crowning north and that lil project juiced up my brain for it! So excited to get back to writing the prologue 💪

sanctuary: an interactive story made with twine.

Hello! Welcome to Sanctuary. It’s a short, entirely free to play Twine based story with sci-fi and fantasy elements. You play an injured traveller on the way to one of the few stable strongholds on earth some time after an environmental disaster. During your recovery, you befriend a bandit, romance a lonely farmer and ruminate on loss, starting over, and the beauty of the night sky. Also milk some cows, maybe! Win over a grumpy horse… if you can.

characters

The Traveller👤: You. Part of a group heading towards Eden, a stronghold for survivors, toward stability. That was then. Now? You’re injured, exhausted, not to mention very, very dusty.

The Farmer (Crane Lowry, RO)🌱: 5’11”. Tawny skin and soft dark brown eyes. Striking dark eyebrows and long black hair. Crane is Mississaugas of the Credit First Nations.

A botanist and farmer. He saves your life after your ill fated trip, and lets you recover in his quiet, almost idyllic home. He doesn’t seem to want you there, but he’s not asking you to leave. Check out Crane’s pinterest board here

The Bandit (Jack Arthur)🥷🏾: 5’7”, Umber brown skin with a cool undertone. Piercing dark brown eyes. She has tightly coiled hair, cut very close to her scalp. Jack is Black Ojibwe. Check out Jack’s pinterest board here.

Crane’s childhood friend and a friendlier bandit than you expected, given her line of work. She agrees to be your escort to Eden when you can make the journey.

The Horse (Mutton)🐴: An Ojibwe pony. He has black and white colouring similar to that of a cow. Mutton does not appreciate this connection very much.

Mutton is Jack’s disagreeable horse. Well, he only seems to despise you. Probably because you never have any snacks on hand.

‼️Sanctuary is rated 16+ for mature themes and depictions of grief, loss and trauma.‼️

prologue: tba

I will release chapters on a semi-regular basis of every two months or so, if nothing happens health wise (alas i am a sickly victorian child)

I’m not sure how many chapters this will be yet, but i’ll write until i’ve run out of plot lol.

ask box: open!

i do not accept nsfw asks.

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