Hi all! It’s been a while since the last update, but works continues on the next chapter!

Life was more busy than I thought it would be in December/January (I moved house, among other things), but things are pretty much back to normal now, and that means work on the game can progress quickly!

The different scenes and whatnot have been laid out a while ago now, and I am over 5000 words into the actual writing (for reference, the Academy chapter was 20,000 words, Stonehold was 23k, so we’re about 25% in). Including the prologue, Elven Kingdom is now over 54k words! Getting the “novel” in visual novel, I guess!

I have been playing around with introducing more systems to the game overall without it being a chore to keep track of (for the players and for me while designing it, haha!). The first such system is that some decision will now rate the main character on a submissive/dominant scale (sort of like a morality system). I don’t want it to have a massive impact but I thought it would be fun to have some extra scenes depending on your preferred choices. To make it work, I went through the game from the beginning and added that for quite a few choices. I’m hoping to make a character sheet to show stats and things like that as you play — more on that in an upcoming devlog.

Question: should I make an extra bonus scene for people managing to stay riiiiight in the middle of the sub/dom spectrum? Let me know ;)

In terms of story, the biggest thing here is the return of Maera (the princess) as a regular companion. I missed the banter between the two, and I always like getting her in trouble ^^ She is, of course, quite crucial to the plot that is unfolding…

Other characters will also be back from time to time, such as fellow students from chapter one, and there should be a few surprises and easter eggs here and there as always!

Quite a bit of lore and story beats from before will also start to make sense (hopefully), and it should push the story towards as satisfying a conclusion as I’m hoping to have. It’s all generic and trope-y, I know, but that’s part of the fun, and I hope you’ll like the twists I’m putting on it. This being chapter 3, I’m expecting one or two more after that.

In term of art, seven new characters have been designed and added so far. With more characters returning than in Stonehold, there is less time to be spent on actually designing new ones, which is nice! Adding different faces and emotions is not a big task, but it adds up. With the cast getting quite big now, it makes more sense to bring older characters back in. Still, I like variety, so there will be a few more new faces here and there, of course.

And that's it, thanks for reading! Please leave any suggestions or questions below, and I’ll be back next Sunday with another update!

In the meantime, here is a new character that you’ll get to meet hopefully soon. Her name is Shialla, Ambassador of the Elves to the Dwarves; one of the few friendly faces to be found in the Dwarven Capital. Always smiling, that one… For now!

Oh, and one last thing, the title! This chapter is called “Gifts of the Goddess”