Operation Backlog Completion 2024
Apr 302018
 

With the Kickstarter campaign for The Good Life nearing its final days, Swery released a prototype demo.

This is especially helpful since The Good Life’s “debt repayment daily life action adventure” photography-themed murder mystery still has people confused about exactly what it is.

Since it’s a prototype, it’s a bit buggy and there isn’t a lot to do, but it still gives a sample of The Good Life’s gameplay. In the demo, you can talk to three different NPCs who give you quests, which you solve through photography.

For example, one character wants proof of two people secretly meeting each other, so you need to find them and take a picture from afar. Another misses his red lorry and asks for a picture to remember it by. In addition to talking to NPCs and taking pictures, you also have the ability to pick up objects, which helps with some quests (such as stopping the lorry).

It’s a short demo. Once you complete a specific quest, the story progresses and you discover the murder, then the demo ends.

There isn’t a lot to the demo, but it’s pleasant and has a lot of potential for interesting quests. My biggest criticism is that I didn’t really like the main character. Naomi is mainly interested in money (she has to pay off a debt in the full game, after all) and she came off as a bit uncaring.

But maybe character development will change that! Either way, I’m interested in The Good Life. If you’d like to check out the prototype demo, it’s available from the Kickstarter page.

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Apr 272018
 

Remember Chuusotsu! 1st Graduation: Time After Time, the odd visual novel we discussed almost a year ago?

Chuusotsu is a bizarre story set in a dystopia. The demo was incredibly strange, but in an interesting way that made me back the visual novel’s translation through Kickstarter.

Well, it’s out now and available on Steam.

(Which is a pretty good turnaround for a Kickstarter.)

Backers got their copies a few days early, although I haven’t played mine yet because of my backlog of doom. Still, I hope to play it soon (we’ve heard that before) and review it here once I’m done.

In other news, it looks like the E3 press conference schedule is more or less set. Nintendo was the most recent to announce their E3 plans, with an emphasis on the new Super Smash Bros. game. (Despite how some people have reacted to that news, I’m certain they will announce and show other games as well. Come on.)

We’ll talk more about E3 and potential announcements once we’re a little closer.

In the meantime, what do you think of Chuusotsu?

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Apr 252018
 

I got a request to share my writing goals ahead of time instead of just recapping them at the end of the year, so here are my goals for 2018 (in addition to my game backlog goals).

By 2019, I will:

  • Finish and revise A Prince’s Price.
  • Create an outline for the revisions of The Threshing Night.
  • If The Nightbringer has not been successful, turn it over to someone to critique.
  • Search for an agent for Agent of the Relari, Penteract of Blood, The Nightbringer, and The Time of Adversity.
  • Have at least 3 short stories either accepted or actively submitted to markets.
  • Join a new (paying) video game job.
  • Manage at least 2 side websites for passive income.
  • Participate in at least 3 book signing events.

Some of these goals I’m actively making progress toward already, while others are a bit further off.

At the end of the year, we’ll revisit this list to see how it went.

Moving on, I’ve made a few changes to try to improve navigation on the site. I’ve added more tags so that if I’ve blogged multiple times on the same subject, you’ll be able to click the tag to see them all.

I also removed the redundant “horror” tag and added two new subcategories to distinguish posts about “My Stories” and “My Games” from other posts.

Let me know what you think about these changes and other things that would help with navigation!

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