I described the last update as a “quick little update” and then proceeded to write somewhere in the region of 1000 words. This time, I’m afraid, I’m going to stick to my promises.

Here is a condensed list of what I’ve been working on over the last couple of weeks:

• Adding dozens of new areas to the House – writing in-game descriptions, adding random events, and writing news bulletins for the cities to describe their changing political landscape;
• Optimization – getting the game to run at a decent framerate even on my cheap laptop;
• Working with Catherine to improve the game’s UI with her formidable artistic skills;
• And, most of all, writing. I’ve started writing character journeys for your crew, as well as fleshing out what I suppose we should call the game’s ‘main quest.’ I’ve written 30,000 words this week – all in need of heavy editing, of course, but I’m still quite pleased. My aim was for the finished game to have between 100,000 and 200,000 words of story content, and at my current rate that looks eminently achievable.

Anyway, I hope you can forgive the brevity. Next time maybe I’ll cobble together something about the experience of writing interactive narrative, if my typing fingers don’t form a union and go on strike in the meantime.

I’ll leave you with another of Catherine Unger’s fantastic illustrations. In the Kickstarter you saw the City of Knives and the City of Keys – welcome to the third great city, the City of Masks, where the masks wear faces underneath.

Hey! Why don’t you follow me on Twitter here? And follow Catherine on Twitter here? She frequently posts amazing art! I, uh, I occasionally post weird poetry written by a computer and complain about things???