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November 1 Update (Patreon)

Published:
2025-11-01 17:01:32
Imported:
2026-06
Tags:

Content

Early weekly update because this one is just jam-packed. >_< Lots of news, but some fun stuff too!

The biggest business news for me is that this coming Tuesday (November 4), Audible will launch the Depthless Hunger audiobook, and the ebook will relaunch as well. This has been pretty stressful, but rather than get into that, here are the links:

https://www.audible.com/pd/Depthless-Hunger-Audiobook/B0FX64WVSR

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0FXVCN78K

This is different from all my previous releases, because it's through a publisher: they gave me a big advance and they're hoping to recoup their investment. If the series doesn't turn a profit, I don't have to give back a cent, but I likely burn that bridge forever, as they're not going to double-down on an unprofitable investment.

I've long had in mind an appeal when this happened... but I'm not going to do it, not now. I'm not convinced that the audience really exists for this project or that it will find success. All of you are familiar with my negativity by now so I won't belabor things.

So get the book if the story sounds appealing or you want to support this project going forward. At some point in the future, hopefully, I will get another shot at industry funding, and I will ask for everyone's support then. This is likely to be just another building block in making my career secure.

-

Let's shift gears with some simple fun: see above for some entertaining statistics extracted from TLS now that it's complete. ^-^ The one I'm happiest about is that the story of TLS includes nearly 2400 unique faces, but Lamsey had the idea to highlight some stats for various characteristics expressions.

Some don't surprise me - I'm always looking for opportunities to have Iris blush or Orilise look shady - but other numbers came out different than expected. I would not have guessed that I only used the Tertia face 12 times, for example.

-

Now for something unusual... I've made a post on GameDevClassifieds and r/INAT, which you can upvote if you want:

https://old.reddit.com/r/gameDevClassifieds/comments/1olsynw/for_hire_i_know_not_all_teams_need_a_writer_but_i/

https://old.reddit.com/r/INAT/comments/1olsz5k/revshare_i_know_not_all_teams_need_a_writer_but_i/

To be perfectly honest, I don't expect much to come from this. But I've spoken before about wanting to find more collaborators, and I know my tendency is to be inwardly-focused and closed off. Making some posts is low reward, but also very low risk. If there's any chance out there that people are looking for someone with my skillset, I want to have at least tried to signal my availability.

I don't talk about it much, but I do reach out to other creators sometimes. So far nothing has come of it, despite some conversations that seemed promising at first. One of these may yet work out, multiplying what I can pull off in future projects.

-

It's been just a little bit over a week since TLS officially launched and it's hard to say how well it's doing because normal metrics don't necessarily apply here. We blew past the previous number of concurrent players and the game is consistently higher than the previous max, but I hear from so many people who are long time fans of the game who waited until now to replay, so I'm not sure how many new players are coming in.

Anyway, I put out version 1.0.1 to do a little cleanup. The changes won't be relevant to most, but it should reduce duplicate bug reports. Haven't bothered with a blog post yet, but here are normal and RTP version links for supporters.

The game could still use more reviews, they never hurt! I also submitted the game to GOG again, so it wouldn't hurt to upvote the Dreamlist page. That has increased a lot since I last saw it, even before I linked it from the recent release.

-

Now, one more image for fun:

According to the text dump, Sarai curses 439 times! Obviously she favors some words much more than others, and the word cloud is not perfectly proportional, but I think it's fun. ^-^

Files

Comments

Decarabia

Wait a moment, I just read the reddit post and want to nitpick something before I continue. In that skill list, there should be something related to dialogue construction! Anyone else think so? To me at least, the back and forth between your characters take the cake, despite knowing/imagining how much more effort the rest of the worldbuilding/narrative etc takes. Anyway, now I'll continue...

AchtungNight

I wonder how many times Qum expresses love and affection. Probably off the charts.

Decarabia

That swear word cloud is pretty funny, imagine it without context. Loving those stats!

sierralee

It's already hard for me to talk up my skills... I considered adding a bullet point about characterization, but couldn't figure out a good way to phrase it. Glad you liked the word cloud. ^-^

sierralee

Haha, ultimately we need something to count procedurally, and Qum's love is too varied to be contained in a simple search parameter.

Rachnera

> because it's through a publisher Who's the publisher out of curiosity? I suppose this is not supposed to be a secret (publishers love to put their logo everywhere) yet somehow there's no hint of its identity on the Amazon page.

sierralee

The (audio) publisher is Audible itself. That's in theory one of the big players... but I don't know how seriously they're taking this. =/ They haven't even put together a cover yet, the book is using the WIPs I gave them. It occurs to me now that my post could have given the impression that there's another publisher, but there's not. The deal/advance was solely for the audio rights.

Rachnera

Unrelated to the previous question: Among the things you could add to your resume, do you happen to have a "working level" in any foreign language? To appeal to the specific crowd of non English native game devs who are creating their game directly in English because their local market is just too small to turn a profit and translations cost a pretty penny for verbose games but are actually so estranged with English they have a hard time using it even in the context of their own team.

sierralee

Interesting idea I hadn't considered! I have a few secondary languages, but I'm afraid it's going to be a case where every language I speak reasonably well, English speakers are commonplace, and those where it would be more of an asset, my skill is too rudimentary... but this is still something to think about.

Rachnera

My own, totally anecdotal, professional experience in the non-game tech industry suggests that way more people are uncomfortable with using English casually that may seem, including in European countries and at high levels of education, and are relieved when they can communicate, if not in their native language, using a mix between their native language and English rather than pure English. Also, it's the usual package deal: do the people with a better fluency than you also sport all the other skills you have?

DuckTogo

Did you ever formulate at what level you would say that your career is 'secure'? I am currently in a similar situation jobwise and just keep pushing more and more to the point that I am worried that I am going to burn out before I ever get to that ideal position of being 'secure'. In my area there is a pretty clear point at which you can say I have made it, but for you I am pretty sure that is not the case, outside of getting insanely rich from one mega-hit.

sierralee

It's not binary in my case, it's a gradient of different levels of secure. I'm at a point where I can say confidently that I'll be doing this sort of thing for the rest of my life, but there's a lot of unknown space in terms of what people I'll be able to hire and what sorts of games I'll be able to create. Best of luck with your own career! I have no advice for avoiding burnout, unfortunately.

guillaume nguyen

Surprised about Tertia's low count too, but I guess the impression that she did more is because her ahego faces were that shocking the first time we saw it XDXDXD Sarai's number of swears is quite impressive ^^ Glad to see that Square Lady is present to continue her fight for the truth ^^

Nathan Phoenix

Fucklord doesn't count as a swear that's just a noun

Christopher

Okay so here is my spiel unless there is somewhere else to write this or DM (please feel free to correct or direct me as i am new here)

Christopher

truthfully this has been one of the most enjoyable games that I have had the pleasure of experiencing in the past five years. One of my favorite genres of games is RPG‘s, and to be perfectly honest, even though I know I am not that old considering I just turned 31 on the second I have always loved the old style RPG‘s as well because it didn’t rely on graphics to look past poor writing/storyline. And while a lot of games use sex and much of the same aspect to ignore obvious issues and the game, you have truly given a work of art that reflects so much passion. I have had to force myself to slow down because I don’t wanna miss anything and I’m enjoying it too much to let it end. I think I’m currently sitting at 160 hours in game and I still haven’t finished it when normally I can complete a game in a day or two. My wife watches me play or gets updates from me daily and the story and character depth has won me over from the first 30 mins of gameplay. And as someone who creates entire new worlds on a regular basis as a DM for DND, there is not a single detail that I have found in this game that seemed less than stellar. I will most certainly be getting every other game you have had a part in because once I finish this and probably replay at least twice, I will need more 😅 thank you thank you thank you 100 times!

sierralee

The most recent update post is fine for comments! FYI, you have a previous comment that isn't showing, but that isn't my doing: there's some sort of Patreon feature that I wasn't aware of that filtered it. Thank you for your review and support!

sierralee

I'm glad to hear that you've enjoyed TLS so much. ^-^ I'm happy that others appreciate my sensibilities when it comes to creating games and fictional worlds, and thanks to everyone's support I intend to keep doing it for a very long time!