After my second full month as a novelist impersonator, I finished a little over 60% of the writing, which I now track through a detailed spreadsheet. The game is now at 66500+ words, roughly a 220-page novel, and 144 choices. It feels amazing to be past the story’s midpoint! I added choices to all chapters up to 11, so I just need a bit of polishing before we are ready for the second playtest. I’m really excited because this will be the first time anyone will see actual new content since 2015. 

I had to keep a careful balance between the many topics Nando discussed with his “friend”. Too much history and Outsider would become a historical novel; too much alien technology, and it would become a hard sci-fi geek fest. Too much philosophy, and the game wouldn’t last very long on anyone’s computer! There’s also a lot of stuff about his personal life in his notes… Too much of that and the story would turn into a young-adult novel. I tried to alternate “heavy” and “light” topics to adjust pacing and give people a little bit of everything.

The Demo chapters are more like a director’s cut remaster and don’t have much depth compared to the rest of the game. This limitation creates some problems that I don’t know how to fully address. The Demo focuses on the sillier aspects of Outsider, and I could see many people dismissing the game altogether because of that. I tried to balance humor with the story’s serious tone, but it’s hard to predict whether the Demo will be effective at selling the game. I still believe it will live or die based on the word-of-mouth after launch.

I want to hit gold in one of the two remaining Steam Fest Next festivals happening before my target release date. These are fully virtual and offer a free visibility boost to all Steam developers. Steam’s algorithm is pretty simple in principle: they show the game to a ton of people and keep increasing its visibility until people stop wishlisting the game. They don’t care how good or how bad the game is; they care about how many people are interested in it.

I haven’t yet decided whether I’ll participate in the June or October Steam Fest… I’m only allowed to pick one. Whatever I do, I must be ready with the best possible trailer and screenshots. This means that I’ll have to take a break from the writing and focus entirely on the game’s art and building an enhanced trailer in the next few weeks. If these are in great shape by the end of the month, I’ll probably participate in the June Fest. Otherwise, I’ll pick the one in October.

Taking a break in the writing is good for other reasons. While I do like writing, I’m not sure I want to do it full-time for the rest of my life… It is very mentally demanding! One lesson from this adventure is that doing something for fun is very different from doing it for work. I want to ultimately treat it like I do music making, something to enjoy for 2-3 months before switching to another hobby and then back a few months later.

I’m still energized, so let’s see how the new trailer turns out. I hope I can share it on my next update!