Hi everybody!
With my broken Wacom tablet, I’m still in a forced pause in terms of drawing, but I’ve continued to write one of the last chapters of the detective mission. The most exhausting thing of all is when the player character doesn’t just die, but his story has to be told to the end…

But probably it doesn’t make sense to complain about too much text in a text adventure.

Besides some nice horror impressions from the Fantasy Film Fest I wanted to get more inspiration for storytelling and choices. So finally I started playing Detroit: Become Human! It looks wonderfully pretty! But! I got skeptical when my fingers stroked the touchpad in rhythmic movement so that the Android character – a housemaid – could clean dishes properly. Maybe even more so, when a Detroit apartheid bus, including an Android Compartment in the back, showed up.
I’ll still keep playing it, because I’m an idiot who loves interactive stories and I enjoyed the character interactions so far – but… oh boy.

I wasn’t joking

Choice of Robots is quite different. I only discovered it yesterday and I’m already completely hooked! In my first playthrough I lived a happy life and died in the circle of my family (mechanical&human) of the Algernon(!) brain disease, the second one I started this morning before work is already moving dangerously fast towards a Terminator scenario.

Frakking toasters.

Basically, the game consists of being an up-and-coming young robotics expert (m/f) and assembling your very own little robot. Depending on how you treat him and what you teach him, the AI will either become more independent, compassionate, skilled, or competent in the military field. These game mechanic values are visible to you the entire time, alongside your fame & wealth. On top of that, you’ll also have to decide for yourself which career path to take. You can start your own startup, be hired by the military, accept a dubious offer from China, or join an existing company.
Whatever you choose, your first robot will accompany you, learn from you and possibly question you (if you have given it this ability). Really philosophical, sometimes unpleasant, sometimes heartwarming questions arise, which I didn’t expect from the rather cheap presentation.

Will your robots become giant mechs, empathizing surgeons or toys?

The game supposedly has a volume of 300,000 words, which is a lot, and the extreme content difference in my first two games has already made it my favorite, ranking above Sorcery, 80 Days & Lifeline.

But what am I writing all this for? You can also play the first 2 chapters (the default is 8 for one run) for free.

At the moment, completely text-based game is far more exciting for me than Detroit: Become Human, but I’ll certainly come back for the nice rain, and… someone has to do the laundry.

Now almost 3 months have passed and finally I have the nerves to write an update!

Ok, let’s keep it brief: I have…
…quit my job
…found a new job.
…scrapped my Cintiq by a firmware update
…annoyed Wacom’s customer service.
…created a Github repository (This has once again confirmed my suspicion that there is an internet guide for dummies for absolutely EVERYTHING.)

The story is now 2/3 finished, which is a lot. Oh God, to look at it. For illustration, here the flowchart of a scene called “dinner”. Above is the start, the green marked fields are a few ends or branches which lead to another chapter. Choices includes simple, stupid things to say, but also hard choices with huge consequences.

Yuck

After the great and very motivating test run at the Comicsalon Erlangen I was able to convince my long-time comrade Timo to join me again after a longer break concerning writing. Two weird brains are better than one and together we worked for 3 years on the webcomic “Tales from the Couch”, so I expect only the best/worst.

Until my Cintiq has died a horrible death, I also worked on backgrounds and characters, you can never have enough of stormy beaches and dark alleys as you know…
WIP, I hope Wacom lets me finish those