It's not Friday, but you're getting an update! Why? Because I'm going to be working a 12-16 hour day tomorrow, and I don't think I'll have any time to do any Mythos work at all.

Actual progress on the game is temporarily paused. Oh no! Has something happened? Yes -- but a good thing. The completion of Scene Eight ("Once Upon a Time in Eorzeroth") brought things to the perfect point to release my first beta build to my testers. I don't like to wait until the whole Chapter is done to start testing, because something fundamentally wrong could happen early on that would result in me having to change a whole lot of crap later on -- and I do not want to have to do "Teri's Eleven" more than once.

I'm really afraid of that scene, but hopefully that means that when I start doing the code it won't be nearly as bad as I'd thought!

So the first round of beta is going pretty well, I think. With my spell checker installed, that cut down on a lot of the typos. A few bad variable incidents, and some really stupid mistakes (like forgetting to actually give one of the characters a side picture). Reception to the story seems positive, which is a big relief! None of the twists or reveals had any of the testers come back like "what is this crap???" which is a huge weight off my shoulders.

I won't post a progress checklist this week, because it's basically the same as last week and formatting that for all the different sites (as I've mentioned) is a pain. I've decided I *will* be making an actual website, but that's going to wait until after Chapter Two's release. 

With that all said, actual forward progress should resume next week, being as there weren't any huge (or even big) issues with the first beta build. While you know by now that I don't give release dates or estimates, this is a good sign that Chapter Two may be in your sticky little hands not long from now. 

Now for the goings on in our personal lives; as always, stop reading here if you prefer to think of the game as produced by an unfeeling AI. 

Morgana got herself a new job! The place she interviewed for that I'd talked about called to reject her -- but she interviewed at a different place on Tuesday, and they called today (two days later!) to tell her she was hired. We're beyond excited for this development, as it means she will soon have actual benefits and a set schedule, improving quality of life for the entire (two person) team here at Nine of Swords! Plus her schedule is overnight -- she works while I sleep, she sleeps while I work, and we're both home and awake for the same periods of time. 

We may annoy the shit out of each other, now.

Keep the Legends alive!

- Teri & Morgana 💜💜