Hello, this is the last progress post for Welcome To The Dark Place before it releases. When this post goes public to non-patrons, the game will be released.
For the past week, I've been working very hard, like cramming for a quiz. Each day is a race against my own sleepiness. I finished an area about a theater play which had stumped me for quite some time trying to figure out how to write it. In the end I wasn't able to fully communicate the thematic complexity that was in my head and just had to simplify things. But with audio, consisting of about 100 unique sound clips made over the course of four days, this is a pretty epic set-piece.
After that I immediately went to finish the game's "essential" areas, which need to be completed for the ending to be accessible. Today I'm working on a silly area which is supposed to be fairly non-linear, and because of the complexity, I brainstormed it in Twine. However, since there's a singular objective to this area, you can see the funnel which naturally appeared. This is a highly simplified version of what I'll be putting together over the next several hours.
I've found hard deadlines to be a useful tool for certain scenarios. For me, they are kind of like a nuclear option when I can't get anything moving. What's good about them is that you'll get more work done faster than you ever thought you could. The bad thing is that a deadline is a deadline, and some things will be under-cooked. (I'm thinking of V55 as an example; the deadline for V55 forced me to pick up the pace, and I carried that momentum into V60 which was much better.) In this case I will almost certainly have to board up some areas that I was never able to fully "figure out." I might go in and finish them after the game's release (but I guess it depends on whether people like the game or not as it is.)
There's 11 days of development left, so this is the last progress post for Welcome To The Dark Place. I think I am pretty accurate in predicting how my games will be received. I don't know where to put this one in comparison to my last four objectively. I see it as a confusing but intriguing, ambitious mess. Kind of like how the ending of The Upturned caused people to scratch their heads, to most this will be confusing and frustrating but also greatly entertaining.