Surprise! There's a new thing!
https://lockedon.itch.io/methods Methods is based on a novel I began writing in 2014. It is one of my longest projects, coming in at 100K words. I started converting the novel to a visual novel four years ago, however I took a long break while I was creating Broken Minds and other projects. I haven't written more of the novel since 2016. Currently the novel version has 55 chapters written out of 100. Converting these chapters to visual novel format isn't easy, but at least I have material to work with. Since the visual novel is the best way to experience the story, I've decided not to release the novel version unless I am unable to complete this version. RELEASE I marks the beginning of what will be a huge game, with many distinct characters, twenty-five mysteries, and a hundred chapters. I'm excited to introduce them to you — many of the characters I created for Methods ended up influencing other characters of mine, so if you've played any of my other games you might recognize some archetypes and ideas that I later recycled — for example, in the second mystery in Methods, Detective Hackett mistakes a mirror for glass. This is a trick that I later used in Pageturner 2 (yes, Methods does actually pre-date Pageturner 2). I could've changed the mystery around, but I thought it was interesting that I relied on it twice.
The benefit of working on a project like Methods with many, many short chapters is that it keeps up engagement, because instead of a month of work to make a 40-minute game like Prison of Lies, it's roughly 2 to 4 days of work to make around five minutes of content which can be released as a "chapter". This is sort of what I wanted to do with Catalyst Wake. However, there's a big difference, which is that Catalyst Wake is so reliant on CGs and multiple locations that it takes much longer to complete a chapter, whereas with Methods, something simple like Chapter 5 took about two days to complete and an extra day to polish.
Unfortunately, bite-sized content doesn't take very long to read. However, with additional features like bios and some interactivity, hopefully I can make downloading each release worth it, and if not, people can always wait until a substantial amount of chapters have been released.
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Brief update on my other projects:
Catalyst Wake: It's taking some time but the first batch is fully written.
Broken Spirits: Unity is being very slow, but I modeled more characters. I'm having a bit of a mid-life crisis about the plot, so I need to sort that out before I move forward.
Pageturner 3: Haven't worked on in a while, but it's on my mind. I have to see what it's like working on it in Scratch 3.0, there's a chance I may have to do some re-coding because I've changed my mind about cloning being superior to multiple sprites. On a slow computer it's just as bad if not worse.
Original Animated Project: Is heading towards becoming a visual novel like everything else I do, but the good news is that I now have a solid direction for the plot.
Games Update: There's definitely stuff to talk about in a Games Update, and I know it's been a while. I want to release it when the first Batch of Catalyst Wake comes out.
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Well, that's the big news!
I hope you enjoy Methods.
Best,
— LockedOn.