The Ritual: Chapter Update (August)

Time for your monthly dose of updates on The Ritual!!

Great news, everyone!

Art: The art for Chapter 1 is.........wait for it........100% done!! We had a good chunk of time this month, so we just plowed through and finished it! The spicy scenes, the edits, the whole she-bang (pun intended)!

My intent this month is to format and insert everything to actually see how it plays in the game, just in case there's any necessary last-minute edits, but I'm hopeful that'll be kept minimal. The real tedium's gonna be rendering out all the paper doll combinations, which we haven't done yet, so that'll and rigging into the game should be all that's left to handle, as far as the visuals are concerned (In the meantime, enjoy a few new cutscene teasers, spoiler-free of course!)

Script: It would entirely make sense to say that - because the art is finished - the script didn't really get anywhere in July, and while that is mostly true, we did truncate a decent chunk of the bits of fluff that added too much extra work for not enough payoff. Every time I come back to reread the script, I see something else that I eventually realize "This doesn't add anything to the narrative and just makes the player click more to get to the good bits..."

While I do pride myself on telling interesting stories that augment (and hopefully enhance) the spice in someway, I'm not above reminding myself I'm getting too wordy, and at day's end, many of y'all just want that sweet, sweet payoff. I can be humble enough to recognize when I gotta get out of my own way and say "The spice must flow..."

To that end, my big goal this month is to get a 2nd pass done. That might mean I honestly just write what needs to be written to get the chapter done, and come back through for a...let's call it a "personality pass" once that's done, so I can keep things interesting. I gotta remember sometimes to think about it like an artist if that makes sense...get the rough down, and then build upon it!

So, that's where we're at for now. Plenty left to do, but I'm as confident as I've ever been that we'll have a published product before year's end! Stay tuned!

Cheers for now!--Sneaky