Hello, folks. Another short post day. D&D went really, really, really long tonight. This is the first time that we’ve technically posted after midnight on Sunday. I’m rather ashamed that I allowed myself to get so distracted and run over. If it makes any difference though, my characters got into an epic battle against a superpowered werebear drinking powerthirst and got turned into gooey paste against an arena wall. They paid for their dalliance with their lives… like some of the cast of Fates! I mean… let’s get to that update.

Wordcount: 2,358 Today’s topic: Name and Yoi: Since some of their scenes go outside of their assigned duties, extra outfits were needed. Name isn’t really the most fashionable nor does she often go out on the town. While she isn’t as much of a gamer as her sister, Name doesn’t really get out of the house much. I’d say she’s definitely more of a tomboy than Natalie; much more fond of tinkering and discovering the insides of how things work. Yoi on the other hand is a very much a social butterfly. In the visual novels alone, Yoi has flirted with pretty much every single major character. She likes to be fashionable (except when she’s on duty) and enjoys the presence of others. Though she is a bit callous at times, Yoi tries to be perceptive of the feelings of others (something she learns from her friendship with Faye in Red Rose/Hope).

During the adventures on Celestia, there are some moments after the excitement is said and done that Name gets a chance to take a night off. If you are on Yoi’s route, you get the option to accept a night on the town with the cheery half-elf. So far, it is one of the longest events I’ve written and is one of Yoi’s most important moments. Kind of funny to think that considering it is just a girl’s night out. When it comes to pre-existing canon, Name actually has two conflicting canon stories involving her romantic interests. The older canon, coming from the old novels, has Name and Anton getting together after Yoi and Anton’s relationship dissolving. The newer canon from the visual novels has a much stronger relationship between Yoi and Name, even if they bicker a bit and Yoi plays a lot of tricks on Name.

I guess that’s the magic of visual novels. I can explore the different possibilities that exist. While I do have to declare one of them canon in the end, I have to see them all before making any calls. The thing is… I’m thinking it is probably going to end up being… Faye. Faye’s just too adorable and she bonds a lot better with motherly Name. Just like most of her other relationships, I see Yoi’s bond with burning incredibly bright but quickly. Perhaps I will be wrong though. If the rest of her route is anything like this scene with Yoi doing what she does best to make Name smile after finding out the terrible news about her traitorous sister, there may be some staying power in their relation…

Enough about Name’s team, let’s show some Celestia WIP CG! There’s a lot of variations in this one, but you’ll have to wait until the release to see them all! There’s a lot of cute scenes between our investigators when those few moments arise when things aren’t exploding around them. Like a wise writer once told me, if the world doesn’t stop burning for a few moments your audience won’t have any stakes in seeing it peaceful once more.

Well, I’m on the borderline of collapse, so that’s all for this week. Stay tuned for more fun and excitement. Remember, next week will see the start of the Rising Angels Writing Contest. We thought we had a theme, but we went back to the drawing board to discuss it once more. Until then, Chief out!

Video of the post is… well, it was going to be the Powerthirst video for you new kids, but I try to keep the video o’ the post without any cursing. So, instead, you get… another D&D related video.

Hello, folks. Chief here with a very fuzzy, very spastic cat. He broke the rest off of my keyboard. I know I really needed to get a new keyboard that actually has all the keys and doesn’t stick, but it still had some life left in it. It’s a bit saddening to think that my old reliable keyboard has to go on to that broken bin in the sky… I just want to take a moment and honor its memory. Many good stories came from it.

Wordcount: 8,022; We are almost finally done with all of these endings. I can stop traumatizing myself with pitting them through such trials. It was a smart idea for me to leave most of the character route scenes for after the ending parts. That means I can write some cute and light scenes to balance out some of the dark stuff. As a writer, writing death and sadness can get to you after a while.

One thing the contest and a few other interactions have taught me is that Faye is the audience favorite for most adorable. I was thinking about that for a bit and wondered why Zuri didn’t rank anywhere near there. Maybe it is because of the lizard aspects, maybe it was the warrior mantra. One thing is for certain, I really want to explore more into Zuri’s day-to-day life. Though she would try to convince everyone otherwise, there really is a lot more to her than just training her body and mind to be a proper warrior. Natalie is probably the best thing for her to realize what she wants to be. And some moments that aren’t so life changing. I doubt Zuri has ever tried ice cream before. I think a nice brain-freezing moment is order.

Really in the mood to write cute slice of life for a bit…

Music update: Want to hear some of the soundtrack for Rising Angels: Fates?

Interested in getting that sneak peak? Thanks to Terranivium, you can!

Art contest update! The judging is in! Let’s take a look at our winners!

Third place was by far the hardest. There were a lot of entries that were fighting for it and it resulted in a lot of arguing among the judges. I mean, it got pretty bad there for a while. In the end, Mookie’s entry of Faye took the spot. While Faye was a common character in the contest, she’s also one of the most adorable characters in the series. The coloring was quite nice, giving the piece a very soft theme that felt quite fitting for Faye. Another thing is the stronger connection to the theme of heritage. In the end, this was the deciding factor. Faye’s heritage of basically being asleep 99% of everything that ever happens ever won the day.

Second place didn’t invoke as much fighting among the judges. Geckos’s entry jumped out to us because it was a comic. That might not seem like a big wow factor, but it was quite original and stood as an awesome idea to the judges. There’s a lot of little things that tied it to the games and some small details that impressed us. It took a moment for me to realize that the font that does look like how Natalie describe Chazari writing is actually readable and is a cute little love letter from Kika. There’s a pretty clear link to the heritage theme. Poor Kika, never knowing how to tell those around her what she really things.

First place… Notice how I talk about theme a lot in the previous two? Out of all the entries, Teresa’s entry stood above it all in that category. From bringing home strays to not getting changed before spending the day reading to not caging a bird but instead making a decorative one, there are a lot of little heritage details that stood out. The overall color scheme was soft on the eyes, the detail in the background was solid, the dog was adorable… All three of the judges were very impressed with the entry and unanimously voted it the winner of the Rising Angels Art Contest.

We had several of good entries in the contest. It was a great contest and I hope everyone had fun with it! We will be starting the writing contest in roughly two weeks.

That’s all for this week! Tune in next time for some more Rising Angels fun. Until then, Chief out!

Video of the post is related to some ideas we are tossing around for after Fates.

Hello, folks! Short post because D&D ended up running late. Just the updates, none of my usual witty banter. Okay, maybe a little.

Wordcount: Like last week, this was more of a coding nightmare week. The good news about coding in Renpy is that it is fairly easy to understand and adding voices is pretty easy. The bad news is that it is a lot of code. I mean a lot. Way too much.

Okay, so we have a hard number on the total of endings to Fates. There are ten unique endings with most of those endings having several different variants to how those endings play out. A lot of the variants are more dependent on who survives and what smaller clues you gathered.There are some pretty tough endings in that list, though not all of the bad ones are really that bad. You can still save the world even if you screw up badly, get people killed, and bungle proving who is right and who is wrong.

Voice acting: I’m happy to announce the new voice actors for Zuri and a previously unknown character named Elizabeth. Secrets, secrets…

Zuri: Lindsay Wells

Elizabeth: Stephanie Williams

Art contest update: The art contest ends in a couple of hours, so get those entries in now if you have them. I’m staying up pretty late tonight, so I’d say there is roughly 9 hrs or so to get entries in. The reason I use by the time I wake up instead of a fixed time is that my e-mail tends to randomize what time it thinks the e-mail arrived. It’s weird as heck.

We’ll announce the winners and talk about the contest next week!

Music update: The custom soundtrack is being mastered and almost finished. Fates currently has 17 different tracks for the game. Depending on how things go, we will be attempting to increase that number.

Order of Ataxia update: This is the last few days for the Order of Ataxia: Initial Effects kickstarter! While it isn’t just your old friend Chief at the writing wheel, it has some remarkable talent and an enjoyable storyline planned. If you can help, we would be appreciative.

Okay, that’s it for this week. Until next time, Chief out!

Video of the post is something that was very much related to tonight’s D&D campaign.

Hey, folks. So, I took a day off from development this week. Why? Because it was my birthday and I turned… I’ll let you all guess. Mostly because I don’t remember myself. It was some time after the Wright Brothers invented the airplane. Back in those days, we did all our coding on paper and used puppets for our sprites. Oh those were the days…

Wordcount: There wasn’t any writing this week. No, this was a nearly full editing and coding week. As we are nearing the release date, I’m putting away my keyboard and… putting the keyboard back out to fix all of the mistakes I made while typing. I’m sure you’ve heard this before, but being half-asleep has a direct impact on writing. While it does make me quite a bit more creative and willing to try new ideas and incorporate them into the story, those words don’t always make it down on paper quite right. By quite right, I mean I’ll write half of one sentence and change to another sentence halfway through. It may have made sense at the time, but…

Also playing a lot of code monkey this week as well. Since the voices for Act 1 and Act 2 came in, there is a lot of coding that needs to be done so the voices play right during the game. You can’t tell how well the voices did if you can’t see them in action, right? Well, that also means getting all the sprites properly coded in. Lots of code. Lots and lots of coding. Very repetitive coding as well. But that’s how it goes when you make a visual novel.

Voice acting update: Auditions for Elizabeth and the recast for Zuri have closed! We should have a casting update for everyone soon.

Art contest update: This is the final week of the Rising Angels art contest. That’s right, if you have an entry that you want to submit, this is the final seven days to do so! We will be accepting entries up until the moment I manage to roll out of bed next Sunday morning.

Rising Angels: Hope update: Hope was nicknamed because of my hope that we could finally see the story that I originally wanted to tell. Not living up to the name. These CG delays have driven me mad, I swear. Since the artist has again failed to deliver, I am hunting down a CG artist to help me complete the remaining illustrations and finally put this story to bed.

Short story update: I got a pretty large number of people who wanted to hear the Sol manifesto, which caught me a bit off-guard. It was a bit of a joke because Sol gives Faye that manifesto in Hope and I really didn’t intend to write another one. Don’t worry, you all will get that soon. The other idea thrown out there was a story involving Faye and Kika. We might be giving Faye and Kika some time off to have their own little vacation. I’m considering possible locations to drop them into. Maybe something a little more… exotic than the usual settings. We’ve got some fun locales in the universe that haven’t been visited in years.

That’s all for this week! Remember, one week left for the contest. The writing contest will be starting in a few weeks as well. Until then, Chief out.

Video of the post is a great birthday song.

Hello, folks. Short update this week as we continue the slow trot towards release. SGDQ was going on this week, I hope you all were able to take the time to support the good cause and catch some awesome speed runs!

Word count: 5,092; After the week of romance with Sol, I returned to the core story. There are so many different ways to enter Act 4 that I’ll be writing this section for quite a while. The different options that you gather in the previous acts all come to a climax in the final act. While I love the various scenarios that opens up, it makes a dozen and a half possible ways to get into the act. Different version do have some similarities, but most of them have major differences. For example, having Faye not be with the party means that one of your strongest proponents for peace between the parties isn’t there. Without her there, the difficulty of brokering a ceasefire between Natalie and Name increases a lot.

While there is an ending that I would consider the best (everyone survives and the culprits are stopped), I wouldn’t say there are any truly bad endings. Don’t get me wrong, a pretty large majority of the possible endings aren’t incredibly positive. Based on who makes it and what clues you have gathered at the ending, you’ll be forced to make some pretty hard choices on what you have to sacrifice. Heck, you might not even want to prevent the end of space travel by the time you get there. In short, there really is no right choice, just what lengths that you, the player, are willing to go.

The ending I’ve been working on this week is one where both sisters manage to gather enough clues to understand what is going on, but somehow managed to get there with absolutely no party members left. That’s right, you can get there with Anton, Yoi, Syl, Faye, Sol, Kika, Zuri, and Alexi dead (Eve and Akurel having left). I’d say it might be the hardest ending to get because you have to make some terrible choices, but somehow survive them. It’s written so you can’t slip up, else one or both of them perish to their mistakes. It’s pretty heartfelt for both of them, seeing what you’ve had to lose to get to that point. There’s no happy end for the romance routes, but you can see the story to a satisfying conclusion by saving the world with no massive losses of life. I’m pretty fond of this ending, honestly, though I don’t know if I’d say it is my favorite one without writing the rest of them.

I think I am going to alternate writing endings, bounce back and forth between the lighter and heavier endings. As good at suppressing emotion as I am, I don’t think I can keep writing the darker endings one after another.

-I am still taking suggestions for the side story. Nobody ended up sending me any thing they’d like to see for the public story that will be included in the short stories book. Doesn’t have to be canon, it can be some fun little alt universe story. If nobody gives me any ideas by next week, I’m gonna write Sol’s Manifesto on Why Lupide Are Not Cute.

That’s it for the week, I’m afraid. This week was mostly just a lot of writing. Next week we should have something more interesting to talk about than the many terrible decisions that await you should you let Faye die. Until then, Chief out!

Hey, folks. Chief here, trying to keep awake at his desk. It’s been a long week and everything is starting to take its toll on me this weekend. Being wiped out by my day job seems to be a common theme, I know, but this week was more taxing than usual. It was so bad that Fuzzy decided to cuddle with me several times. The moment cats start showing affecting without expecting a bribe of food you know you are not doing so hot. My birthday is coming up soon, so I think fighting for a small vacation might be in order.

Wordcount: 4,999 (So close to that 5k, but I ended early. This week was a return to Act 1 after finishing up Act 3 last week. I’ve been trying to get all of the character routes and investigation scenes done for the early part so that we can finally get that demo out. It was originally planned months ago, but I held back after we decided that we wanted to release a full Act 1 as a demo instead of a chopped down one with a few features missing.

The character route I was working on this week was Sol’s. Sol’s route inclusion is something that has caused a small amount of controversy because it was viewed as a hostile invasion of otome into yuri. While I will not dwell too closely on that line of thinking, I do think including Sol’s route was a good idea. Unlike the rest of the cast, Sol and Natalie’s friendship is something that has extended for years and years. There have been a lot of rocky moments between them (Lenna being the biggest point of contention between them), but they have always kept that bond strong. Sol has always been something of a pillar to Natalie. Whenever things have started falling apart, she could always count on him to lend an ear and reliably help however he could.

But there is a lot on Sol’s mind as we enter Fates. Over the years, Sol has lost a lot of friends to the war. He almost lost another one on the Nimross without being able to do anything other than continuing his duties as the executive officer. Having to count on Zuri to be an emotional anchor for Natalie while he continued his duties took a tough mental toll on Sol. With the Katajion agents closing in on them, Sol doesn’t want to keep losing friends, his emotions are slowly starting to creep out. Part of the fun of having multiple routes is that in the Zuri/Akurel/Alexi routes, Natalie isn’t there to listen to him because she is pulled away and Kika instead serves the role as Sol’s vent box. The one little difference ends up shifting a lot of the relationship lines because Kika gives advice a lot different than Natalie. Kika and Sol is another one of the possible relationship lines in Fates. There are a couple non-MC ones in addition to them as well, Faye/Lenna being another prominent one you can make happen. Anyway, off-track again.

But with Natalie being there, Sol has his oldest friend to hear the troubles of the heart and mind of the dutiful officer. Will it give fuel to the sparks that have always flickered between them? That waits to be seen… Either way, writing scenes with Sol not being annoying, angry, grumpy, or exhausted has been pretty fun!

Art contest: There is only three weeks left in the Rising Angels art contest! Remember to get those entries in soon!

Voice acting update: The voices for Act 1 and Act 2 are in the hands of the code monkey, by which I mean myself. Right now, we are going through each line, reviewing it, and coding it into the respective section. I’m hoping to have all of them coded in before the end of the upcoming week. With everything coming into place, we should have something solid to show you all soon.

Also, we still have auditions going on for the minor character, Elizabeth, and the recasting for Zuri. You can find out more about it here.

Order of Ataxia: Taking a moment before we wrap up this session to do a quick plug for the kickstarter being ran by another team (and led by old Chief) under the IDHAS banner called Order of Ataxia: Initial Effects. It is a slice of life BxG visual novel with some heavy fanservice, but I hope you all will take the time to see if it interests you.

Doctor Charles Malcom always dreamed of worlds far beyond his own. With a team of scientists and countless experiments, he finally broke out of Earth and onto the rest of the planescape! Unfortunately, his experiments caused unforeseen troubles by disrupting the flow of other worlds. With the gods of the planescape threatening punishment for all eternity, it is up to Charles and his overseer from the gods, Fallore, to right the wrongs his devices have caused.

This time, Charles finds himself in the city of Aidis, a faltering castle town with a thief problem. A thief who has her eyes on a royal magical treasure, the machine core of experiment #26. Will you side with the elven thief, Raiyne, to help liberate it from the clutches of Lady Beta and her court or will you remain loyal to the court and find a way to safely (and legally) liberate it from their possession before it brings about doom?

With that, I am heading to bed before I end up passing out a third time while trying to write. Probably because I wrote too much Sol, a generally alert person, and not enough of Faye. Passing my exhaustion on to my characters… that’s how it works, right? Until next time, Chief out!

Video of the post is one of the few things that made me laugh this week. NSFW: Cursing

Hello, folks. It’s that time of the night where we turn on the black light and let the Dungeons and Dragons begin! It’s D and… what? It’s over? Apparently I can’t tell time and it is not D&D time, but time for the Fates Weekly Update.

Wordcount: So, good news this week! We have finally finished all of Act 3’s core. This week, I finished writing Name’s section of Act 3. Her section is a bit shorter than Natalie’s, but there is a fair bit more gameplay in it than Natalie’s. Natalie’s section has a lot more of the traditional clue gathering and interrogation sections that run throughout the game. Name’s, however, is a lot more puzzle focused as she attempts to break through the locks to gain access to her truths on Ona’thon. And survival. There’s very much a survival element for her.

Going into Act 4 is a lot of writing. There are a lot of possible options and the start of Act 4 is where everything comes back together. Who is alive, who is dead, what items have been acquired, what party members are slighted against, and what truths have been discovered all play into it. As this is the first time that Natalie and Name meet since the start of the game, it is a fair explosion of variables. What does that mean? That means for the next couple weeks, I’m going to be writing a thousand different variations of the same scene. Some of them are going to have minor variations, some of them are going to have a lot of variation. Natalie and Name being the only survivors facing each other with no understanding of the other’s actions is going to end a lot differently than if both parties are holding together and prepared to listen to the other.

I think the worst situation has to be the first one though. Even if you fail the events of Act 3 and only one party is still standing, you don’t have to pit protagonist against protagonist with nothing but their differences standing beside them. After the terrible ordeals that each has gone through, both investigators will stand by their convictions and what choices and items you have will determine who walks away from it. Even in the other outlined ends, the worst thing that will happen is pitting friend against friend, possibly lover against lover. But to turn against your family to defend the galaxy, to defend what you think is right. Tough choices, tough choices. But that’s how it goes when you as the player have the ability to influence the story. You make poor Chief have to write sad and painful ends.

CG: I was going to save this completed CG to show on a rainy day, but I think today might be a good reveal. We went through a lot of discussion if we were going to split our protagonists (for those of you who have stuck with us through this weekly updates), but I think we made the right choices in the end.

Voice acting: We have reopened auditions for Fates voice acting. Due to real life issues, we are being forced to recast Zuri, as well as introducing one final minor character. If you are interested, you can find more information here.

Art contest: We’ve had our first entry into Rising Angels fan art contest! As a reminder, you have left than a month remaining to get your entries in. After we finish up with the fan art contest, we will be holding the writing contest after that.

That’s all for this week. Tune in next time! Until then, Chief out!

For the video of the post, let’s reveal the song from the opening.

We are going to start our lead up to Fates’s release with a couple of contests. The first contest is going to be the big fanart contest! There will be two more, though they will be a writing contest and a raffle.

Theme: Heritage; The first contest is more of a look at the past, where we have come. In order to determine our future, we must know where we come from. Everyone has a past, just as the series has a pretty long and decorated one. So the challenge being posed is to draw your imaginings of the pasts of the cast. What events transpired to shape the characters you read about today. What sort of heritage does each of the cast hold dear to them?

Eligible games to draw characters from:
Anton’s Vacation
Rising Angels: The Red Rose
Rising Angels: Reborn
Rising Angels: Fates

Prizes, what you all are interested in! Both the writing contest and art contest have identical prizes. Now, I’d like to give out more than large cash prizes, so if there are any donations to our contest, I’ll welcome them. I’m chatting with a couple people to see if they would be willing to lend some aid, so prizes may increase.
First place: $200 USD via Paypal
Second place: $100 USD via Paypal
Third place: $50 USD via Paypal

Contest officially starts on July 1st, 2015

Deadline: August 15th, 2015

Results announced: August 22nd, 2015 during our regular Fates Weekly.

Judging: All pieces will be judged on creativity, relation to the theme, and plain old awesomeness. All pieces will be reviewed by the dynamic IDHAS trio: Chief Editor Komi and his two bumbling assistants. Depending on the number of entries, we might include a fan vote in there as well.

Art contest rules: 1. You must have at least one character from either Rising Angels: The Red Rose, Rising Angels: Reborn, or Anton’s Vacation. You can include other characters, if you wish.

2. Proper credit must be given to all characters. (Mostly if you include characters that aren’t yours or the studios.)

3. You must include the theme in some way, shape, or form.

4. You can submit up to two pieces for contest.

5. Keep it under XXX rating. IDHAS has never been a family friendly studio, but let’s keep the smut out of this one. You can toe that line, just don’t cross it.

Either post entries here or send them to overwatch@idhasstudios.com . Winners will be announced on the website and e-mailed.

Hello, folks! Chief here! Okay, not really here, I’m down visiting family for the day. I’m writing this while everyone is sleeping. In addition to seeing my own brothers and sisters, I got to see Fuzzy’s brother as well. It’s a bit strange to see a cat that looks just like my fuzzball except not as fuzzy and calm… kind of. Glad to see spastic is a family trait. I don’t know when he’s going to come back and steal my keyboard, so let’s get on with the update!

Wordcount: 12,808 (As everyone may remember from last week, I was having a bit of a rough spot with Act 3. I just couldn’t figure out how I was going to treat Natalie’s side of the adventure. Good news, I finally found my way through that one. Bad news, there are now a lot more ways that you can really mess-up Natalie’s adventure. Like all writers, I tend to… accidentally let my characters get into really bad, heart-rending situations. There are a lot of tough calls to make in Fates and I can officially say that Act 3 is the most difficult of the four to get an all-survivors ending. I was going to say get a happy ending, but there are ways to still end happily. Happiness is in the eye of the beholder, after all.

But there is one scene that is coming up that I’m both really looking forward to since some light and cute after all this death 20,000 leagues under the sea, but has some really depressing things depending on how you ended Act 3. That’s right, it is time to write the Natalie’s Birthday scene. Originally, it was slatted to be at the end of Act 2, when everyone was most likely to be there. Now, it can be a very lonely birthday.

Without getting too spoilery, each character route has their own take on the event. Zuri, being a draemon and hatched from an egg with no real family, doesn’t have a good understanding of what birthdays are. With the help of Akurel, she undertakes the daunting task of trying to throw a party of Natalie. In Sol’s route, he very much understands what a birthday is, especially since he spent many of Natalie’s younger ones with her. This time, it wants it to be a special one and is going to try and be romantic for her. Naturally, romance and Sol are two polar concepts. The Great Kika Starr knows how to throw a party. Even if they are stuck in space, Kika has big plans and is a totally awesome host! If anyone wants to help, that is… Which leads to Akurel’s version… where they just watch movies and hang out. Or not. Who knows what that Raltin temptress has in store…

But there are multiple versions of these events. It’s hard to have cute or romantic moments if you’ve spent the entire game hurting their feelings, fingering them for possible crimes, or if they aren’t among the living anymore. The last one is the worst to write. If you have developing a strong romance and then have to celebrate such a moment alone… or worse, completely alone since nobody made it out… Don’t slack in your investigations. I’d rather be the only one who has to suffer these scenes.

Contest update: The Rising Angels Art Contest is still going on! We will be extending out the deadline since IRL work has kept me from properly spreading the word. The new deadline will be August 15th.

Side work: The work on the book of short stories is going well. We’ve got stories for most of the main cast (Zuri and her childhood (I ended up finishing this one from a previous open story), Sol and Kika on the Xeon, Anton and Name’s adventure before Fates, and a few others.) However, I’ve realized I have one opening in my lineup. I’d like to propose a few ideas for the final story. This story will be open to everyone as well as included in the short stories.

1.Syl’s Day Off, a story of the trained assassin’s day off with Yoi.

2.Natalie’s MMO Adventure, a somewhat alternative universe with Natalie and Name’s favorite fantasy MMO as they attempt to clear the final boss before Natalie leaves for the Academy.

3.Alexi:Desert Queen, the story of Alexi leading her band of cutthroat… I mean, merry thieves and escaping the law.

4.Your ideas! What sort of canon, alt universe, or weird adventure would you like to see with which members of the cast? I’d prefer lighter stories, but I’ll take all ideas into consideration.

My family is awake now and I should be spending what limited time I have with them. Until next week, Chief out!

Hello, folks. I know many of you came out here tonight expecting to hear the latest and greatest on the development of Rising Angels: Fates, but there isn’t going to be a lot today. Between being a host to friends and family on this holiday weekend, I’ve been tied down with my day job. That means there isn’t a lot of time to write a solid weekly and my brain is too mushy to write something charming and witty. Gonna be short and brief tonight, we’ll get back to the regular show next week.

Wordcount: Couldn’t tell you, I’ve deleted and rewrote the same set of scenes more times than I care to count. For the regular viewers, you’ll remember that I do a lot of prep work going into a scene to keep rewrites to a minimum. While that is a key technique, it doesn’t work in all situations. I’m trying to wrap up the Bri VII scenes and I just can’t find a way that makes me satisfied that you, my dear readers, will enjoy. I think what I am going to do is just add some additional scenes to branch out the story in a direction that would allow the conflicts to resolve themselves. Part of the problem with writing branching stories is that you hit points where you should have an option, but having the option just messes up your existing flow. Natalie should be given a chance to survive her bad decisions, though you may have to work for your survival.

Gameplay: Anyone here a fan of 999 and Virtue’s Last Reward? I am! This may come as no surprise, but I’m a fan of puzzle solving and old school adventure games. That being said, we are now testing the implementation of some extra game features into Fates. In addition to the usual questioning and investigation sections, we were thinking about adding some puzzle solving parts since Natalie spends far too much of the game trying to escape both the authorities and the culprits. I’m currently playing code monkey to find a way to tie them together to create a seamless adventure of fun. Before I open the floor to opinions on inclusion of these extra features, I would like to get a working demo or play video to give people an idea of what they could be.

Art: Due to some health complications, we will soon be looking for another artist to assist our under-the-weather CG artist. If you are interested in working with us, please send an e-mail to overwatch@idhasstudios.com . We will be doing a formal offer posting in the upcoming week. Early warning, while we are not forecasting any possible delays to release, we will keep everyone posted if this does cause any issues.

Not the most positive weekly update, but there isn’t anything that Chief hasn’t seen and handled before. Now I need to go before someone uses fireworks to set something on fire. Until next time, Chief out.

For the video of the post, let’s have something overwhelmingly cheery to brighten the mood!