forevergoldgame

[forevergoldgame]

To Play the Rook

PLAY FOREVER GOLD | FOLLOW DEVELOPMENT: @forevergoldgame

[forevergoldgame]

Improbable Guest

PLAY FOREVER GOLD | FOLLOW DEVELOPMENT: @forevergoldgame

[forevergoldgame]

Hey there! Figured that we were overdue to talk about the status of Episode 2. We've been actively working on the first arc since Episode 1 dropped, but we encountered some snags and had a little workshopping to do before we could say anything specific about it.

This will be a brief update without much to show, since we're still in the phase of development where everything is raw and unpolished. (We write "ugly but functional" first, all the pretty art and flashy programming magic comes in later.)

I also wanted to give a quick shout out to everyone who has been so kind as to leave comments & reviews, liveblog their playthroughs, share it with friends, send us asks, submit bug and typo reports, or tip us a few bucks! We do FG for the fun of storytelling, and it means so much to us when you let us know you're listening.

Now, let's talk Episode 2!

I've used a lot of phrases like "learning curve" in the devlog, and I'll probably use it again, because we're going to be grappling with some new problems entering our first major story arc. Thankfully, the bumps in the road are small and easily remedied compared to the ordeal that was writing and rewriting Episode 1. We still encountered some pitfalls, and lost some time to scrapped scenes, but we're making our way back on track.

To keep a long story short:

We had a three-episode arc planned.

We fleshed out the first of those episodes.

...And then we realized that a major driving plot beat we had planned would actually make way more sense in a later arc and was awkward and unwieldy to implement here.

Major rewrites ensued.

It's all for the best - our revised first arc feels more sensible all around. It's a balancing act, trying to deliver interesting drama at a good pace while still giving players enough time to get their bearings!

For now, I'll leave off with a cryptic list of things that we've written into Episode 2:

A tearful reunion!

The introduction of the Convoy's Man of the Third Estate!

Selecting your final ideal!

An alternate perspective! (Whatever that means.)

The Convoy's first attempt to solve a problem!

-LS

[forevergoldgame]

In the future Episode 2 of @forevergoldgame, the Convoy is actually going to actually get on the road and start traveling. That means characters depicted on horseback. That means an opportunity to overthink and overdevelop some "horses."

Usually I'd just hand some colored napkin scribbles to Dan but it sounded fun to clean it up a little bit more so that's what I did.

(I also played with designing some riding tack, but realistically the tack depicted here is probably not going to be something we want to have to recreate across insert illustrations, so take those designs with a grain of salt. Also, ignore all the missing straps and details that should be there but aren't.)

Also, as a side note... man it's NIGH IMPOSSIBLE to recreate a dapple gray coat in a simple cartoon cel style, holy shit.

[forevergoldgame]

Drawing some guys who don't have proper art (or only outdated art...) in preparation for the yearly artfight! I haven't really talked about Elijah in public at all, so I wonder how many people played Episode 1 of @forevergoldgame and suspected he was my doing.

[forevergoldgame]

submitting my live reaction to Lucas' flustered sprite 'cause i think it's funny :]

he activates my cuteness aggression vkjebkgjeb

Uh-oh, you triggered his persecution complex. (THANK YOU SO MUCH, THAT'S DELIGHTFUL. And an understandable impulse.)

[forevergoldgame]

I have a friend who loves everything I've shown them of the story and would love to play, but is unable to due to having a trigger relating to unsanitary words. Would it be possible to make some sort of filter to censor certain words so that they would be able to enjoy this wonderful game?

Hello! Glad you're enjoying the game, and honored you'd share it with friends.

Broadly speaking, there are some complexities to the idea of accommodating triggers in fiction, both in terms of artistic vision and practical implementation. If, hypothetically, a reader was sensitive to character death, there's not anything we could do to make them comfortable short of writing an entirely different story. On the system end, writing smart word filters that are actually useful to players is trickier than it might sound.

Thus, when Dan and I were discussing accessibility features in early development, we came to the conclusion we couldn't realistically promise support for trigger/sensitive topic accommodations.

That said, we're both proponents of taking things into your own hands and solution-crafting when you have an uncommon problem with no in-built solutions. We're curious people, so we asked ourselves what we would do in your friend's position and did a little investigating as to what the options would be. There's good news and bad news.

The good news: word-replacer browser extensions help!

We tested the game with a few word replacer extensions. The results were mixed. Each "page" of the story is stored as text on the back end, and some extensions had a lot of trouble with this. A few Dan tried couldn't load passages that contained block words properly at all.

Our best recommendation is "Word Replacer" for Firefox, which loads passages just fine.

However… it doesn't distinguish between plain displayed text and text in links and images. If you block a word that is used on the back-end, you might end up with missing images or links that lead to nonexistent passages. See how replacing "Naktoga" breaks his portraits:

A reader using a word replacer extension would have to be okay with the possibility of encountering minor hiccups, and they would have to be willing to toggle the replacer off for a few passages if they encounter link direction issues.

The bad news: a word replacer might not be enough.

Censoring specific words doesn't change the fact that the grime of the late 1700s is pretty baked into the story. Our first "plot arc" is going to be pretty explicit about acknowledging this and contain depictions of illness and antiquated ideas about sanitation.

So - proceed with caution. Always keep your own tolerance threshold in mind when engaging with art that contains subjects or themes which distress you.

-LS

[forevergoldgame]

If you've been having trouble accessing web version - it is now back up and working!

Sorry about that; had a domain-related hiccup. If it's still loading an error for you, you can press ctrl+shift+r to do a "hard refresh". (Or, press and hold the reload button on mobile.)

[forevergoldgame]

Can I see full body pics of the characters?

Yes! (You can view these at any time in-game on their respective codex pages. You can also click to enlarge the image there!)

Snout:

Human:

And lastly, your goodest girl:

[forevergoldgame]

Uh, I can't seem to load the save I've made during the demo of the Forever Gold, I guess I won't be able to?

The demo was developed in isolation as an experiment, and Episode 1 does not continue from it. Thus, demo saves are not compatible with the actual game.

[forevergoldgame]

Forever Gold is a text-heavy dark fantasy roleplaying game. Assume the life of Duke Quintrell Barghur, a pariah of high birth, and grapple with your unlikely rise to political relevancy as the thriving alliance between Vestur's three kingdoms comes under strain. Achieve, fail, and despair as you navigate the frustrations of the Tri-Kingdom court and negotiate precarious double-binds. Halfway between visual novel and interactive fiction, Forever Gold is a unique multimedia experience incorporating artwork and writing with RPG mechanics such as skill systems, dice rolls, and lasting narrative decisions. It is intended for mature audiences.

EPISODE 1 NOW AVAILABLE

At long last, our first real installment! Brought to you by @broncoburro and @lsdoiphin, Forever Gold is a massive labor of love; this episode is the first of many more to come. Play online in your browser, or download to play offline on your desktop.

👑Reblogs greatly appreciated!👑

[forevergoldgame]

🐇FATE LOOMS. Episode 1 - "The One-Handed Convoy" releases tomorrow! ✨

And with some last minute troubleshooting with itch.io's browser game limitations, everything is ready to go!

It's been a long journey and I'd like to thank everyone who kept an eye on the project for the months between our demo release and now. (And of course, the people who have been following the project since before we had anything to show!) Forever Gold is 100% a niche labor of love, and knowing people are interested and invested means so much to us. Every bit of feedback we get - even the little jokes you guys leave in the tags of reblogs - helps sustain us on a psychic level.

And now, some "closing thoughts" on the development of the first episode:

Episode 1 definitely put us through quite the struggle. It was very much not our intent for there to be a 10 month (!?!) gap between the demo and the game's first proper release. It wasn't all our fault, and some of the detours we took needed to be taken for the good of the project. But some of it also was our bad. We have learned a humbling lesson on the pitfalls that can occur when taking a story from napkin outline to polished installment.

But now we know what not to do in the future, and I'm happy to say that Episode 2 is already in development! And it will not take 10 months to deliver. Episodes 2 and beyond will be shorter in length and not require even a fraction of the same "overhead" in regards to making art assets or developing features. Whew!

We are very much looking forward to hearing what you all think of our first installment, whether that be in the form of an itch.io comment or review or an ask here or whatever else. There is so much to see in our first installment, and there is so much more planned ahead!

-LS

[forevergoldgame]

2 MORE DAYS EVERYONE!!

LS here. Today I'm going to talk about my favorite thing: UI design. When it's good, it's utterly invisible, but when it's bad, everyone notices!

There were definitely some hurdles and hiccups in the UI design of the demo. Part of it was me being unfamiliar with my tools, part of it was not understanding some of the in-built features of the sugarcube twine template. Since then I've brushed up on my JS and restructured things to make the game more intuitive.

First up, we now have two different options for the choice menu! By default, the game displays the "scrolling list" as seen on the left. Using either touch controls or your mouse scroll wheel, you can cycle through the available options before making your choice... or if your device lacks touch/wheel options (or you dislike needless UI animation), you can set the choice menu to "static list" and have your options display in a plain list.

Next is the top bar! At first glance, the buttons might look the same as they did in the demo, but they are not. Yes, the larger of the two still leads to a (new) character summary, but the smaller button now opens the new glossary rather than than being a redundant link to the inventory.

The glossary is a small feature a few readers suggested and it does exactly what it says. It combs through the current passage and looks for vocabulary words which may be unfamiliar to readers.

As always, the glossary feature is meant to be a convenience for readers who may have taken breaks in their playthrough and would like a refresher. It's an anti-frustration feature, not "homework!"

The settings menu is much like it was before, but with a few new features. Changing the theme now changes the UI popups as well as the main layout, so no more white text on dark backgrounds for light theme users! Mobile users will also be happy to learn that you can adjust touch sensitivity - this should hopefully fix some of the issues with people triggering the touch menu when scrolling down the page.

(The touch sensitivity range given in the menu might be tweaked later though - I've only had a few people test mobile for me so my perception of "the average mobile device" has a lot of holes in it. Mobile users, you'll have to let me know if the range is too great/too small to be useful!)

The "You" page has been separated from the Party menu and overhauled. This was mentioned in a previous post, so I'll move on to how the Party menu has been restructured!

Wanting to have as much information as possible easily available, I did away with the individual subpages in favor of these smaller summaries you can scroll through (using touch, mousewheel, or buttons).

The longer, unclear lists of companion thoughts are now represented by almost equally vague relationship icons. The left icon gives you an overview on "what" your relationship is, while the right icon gives you an idea of its "tone." Broadly speaking, "low tension" relationships are ones where the given companion and Quincy largely agree, and "high tension" relations are ones where you do not. A friendship with high tension might manifest as a cheeky rivalry, while a low-tension enemy might be someone who resents Quincy but stays polite for the sake of shared goals.

The travel log has gotten a similar retool for ease of use. We've chosen to drop the framing of "quests" in favor of plainly listed "tasks." Itemizing story events as "quests" was a sort of holdover from early development, when we were still conceptualizing what "gameplay" for an IF story like this would even look like, but as development progressed, it became clear that was kind of an overcomplication.

The timeline on the synopsis page has also been done away with in favor of this woven history log which tracks the beginning/ending of arcs and some big ticket player choices. You can scroll through the squares for a brief reminder of what you did in your specific playthrough!

The inventory has been redone to better reflect how we're putting the inventory system to use in-game. Doing away with "notes," we now have three categories of inventory item: actual items, Quincy's observations, and oaths. What is an oath? You'll just have to find out!

The codex has received a ton of QoL updates - namely, better options for navigation and a simple search function. We've also altered the categories somewhat and reassessed what "deserves" an article and what should exist as an amendment to a larger article, as - for example - giving each and every named location a codex entry like we originally planned would very quickly spin out of control and overwhelm players. We hope the end result is a cleaner codex experience!

And, finally, we have the retooled map. Instead of awkwardly navigating submenus, we now have one huge map with everything on it! The player can navigate by either clicking the points on the map or the list of available locations. A selected location will display in the corner, and list any active story tasks associated with that location.

And that's all for today's post! We're so close to release, and I can't wait to hear everyone's thoughts on what we've made!

-LS

[forevergoldgame]

3 DAYS! GETTING CLOSER!

A lot of the portraits changed between the demo and first actual release. Part of it is Dan becoming more confident drawing these characters (after drawing them all 1000 times), but we did do a lot of design tweaking. We thought we'd talk a bit about our character design tweaks and process!

Quincy has not changed much in terms of core design. The biggest change he's had since my first iterative scribbles is the addition of his hat. However, I have long struggled to capture his proportions. He is meant to look solid, but my draftsmanship has had some catching up to do. I'm still learning, in fact! I will say his newer portraits are much more in line with the blocky fullness I intended. -Dan

D'Angelo wasn't a character I initially intended to revamp much for the full release. It was design change by a thousand cuts when I decided to redo his portraits just to bring the art quality up to snuff. First - I took issue with the incredibly inaccurate button-down he was wearing. (We're not being so strict about clothing style timelines or even limitations of reality, but this one just bothered me so much.) Then, I thought, I might as well make his overcoat a little fancier.

Finally, his head seemed somehow under-dressed by the end of that. He could use some more rakish qualities, I thought, and tried throwing some jheri curl/Prince-esque hair at his head. I wasn't so sure about it at first, but upon showing it to L.S. and a few friends, IT WAS A RESOUNDING HIT. Now it's hard to imagine him without his luscious curls. -Dan

Lucas's hair is now black with silver tips, rather than completely silver with red tips. While this invalidates that old comic, I think his design just reads better at a glance if his hair isn't in competition with his already lighter skin/fur. His purely silver hair was also decided at a time when we toyed with allowing more anime-esque hair colors in the setting. Out of all the characters, Lucas looks most like he just set foot out of an old-school JRPG, and while that's mostly fine, I still want him to look grounded enough in the setting and like he's actually related to his brother.

(Also, the pedant in me just couldn't believe he is maintaining perfectly dyed-to-the-root locs while he spends most this story traveling. Or that he dyed his eyebrows. There's just no way.) -Dan

Vicky both is and isn't much of a change. Sure, the portraits look quite different, but I didn't so much change her design as much as I approached drawing some of her individual features. And that, in turn, changed how Dan interpreted my sketches in her style.

See, Vicky is actually based on an older character of mine that I wrote years and years ago. And so, when I dusted her off to reuse her in Forever Gold, I just kind of belted out some concept art that was very close to how I drew her back then and handed that to Dan without much iteration. Then, once she was there standing beside the rest of the cast, I realized... eh, I'd probably choose to emphasize different aspects of her design were I to take another crack at it. So when Dan presented the opportunity to me, I went for it.

With her design refresh, I drew inspiration from female leads in 80s action movies. Unlike a movie star, however, she's meant to sort of straddle the line between handsome and a little off-putting, hence her large teeth and prominent gums. I wanted to evoke the feeling of a woman who would get told she "would be so pretty" if she changed 8 things and stopped working out and then does not do those 8 things and instead gets an extra 10 reps in at the gym, just for the haters.

(Her snout design pretty much stayed the same though because it was already right where it needed to be.) -LS

--

Hope that was a fun bit of insight for ya'll! Thanks for sticking with us through all this. See you in a couple days!

-Dan and LS

[forevergoldgame]

4 DAYS!

Today's is a short post, answering a question on everyone's mind: who from the demo appears in Episode 1?

If you're curious as to who you'll meet and don't mind being a little "spoiled," read on! But don't worry - those who don't return in Episode 1 will be back in future episodes. ;) Introductions need pacing is all.

As seen in prior screenshots, Quincy's bestie and brother both appear, being introduced early in the episode...

...But they aren't the only familiar faces returning! Kaitos and Vicky also make appearances, as well as - wait, who is that last guy? Never seen HIM before. I wonder what his grievous personality flaw could be?

So that leaves Imani and Oscar absent from the lineup of major characters. But they won't be absent for long; Imani's introduction is slated for Episode 2!

Beyond that, you'll also encounter a few others from the demo, a number of characters who were mentioned but not met or elaborated upon, as well as some entirely new strangers:

-LS

[forevergoldgame]

(5 days until you are trapped in a carriage with some of the most annoying people in all of Vestur, that is.)

Sneak peak screenshots, anyone?

The "You" page has a lot of helpful info about your particular Quincy. Traits, skills, and ideals are all visible here rather than cluttered in the Party menu as it was in the demo.

The Camp feature has made a return. Navigating Camp has been streamlined and it is now much easier to tell when your companions have something new to say and harder to "miss" conversations by accident. (That said, ignoring your travel buddies remains perfectly possible.)

Judging by their expressions, we can guess that Quincy has managed to do something ill-advised...

Oodles upon oodles of illustrations have made for the this chapter. Sometimes they're smaller images, but at times, they can fill an entire passage. It must be an especially long journey here.

It was not possible to die in the demo, but it is very possible in the game proper. Don't worry, it just kind of happens sometimes. Death is not a player punishment. Death is a player inevitability!

LS has worked hard in overhauling the systems on both the front and back ends to run smoother and hopefully be more intuitive than they were in demo. As well as generally more beautified. (And I'm of the opinion she greatly succeeded.) One of her later posts will go into more detail on some of the UI changes!

Thanks for perusing! We're so excited for you to play. : )

-Dan

[forevergoldgame]

Love the world you guys are making, I've played the demo like seven times, really looking forward to chapter 1's release :) I'd love some sort of pronunciation guide if you'd be willing to write one up, character names, place names and the like? Is it "Kerostianism" or "Serostianism?" Nerd problem but I'm losing my mind /lh

Ooh! I’ve pondered about whether anyone benefits from some sort of “official statement” on the topic of pronunciation, but I erred on the side of “probably not.” But hey, if the people want it, who am I to argue? IPA pronunciations for all! (;

Here’s a brief list of words, places, and surnames. Note that both Dan and I suffer from terrible reader’s pronunciation ourselves, and for made up Vesturian words, you are totally within your right to say “that’s stupid” and pronounce it a different way!

Meur /mʊər/

Ceros /səroʊs/

Cetol /sɛtoʊl/

Andimeur /ændɪmʊər/

Barghur /bɑrgʊər/ - though my mushy American valley girl accent often truncates it to [bɑrgər]

Keshet /kɛʃɛt/

Khatar /kætɑr/

Asenath /æsɛnæθ/

Wylvire /wɪlvaɪr/

Sadaltajir /sædəltɑdʒɪər/ - taken from an uncommon name for the star Zeta Aquarii.

Morbre /moʊrbrə/

Diadem /daɪədɛm/ - this one’s a real word! It means crown.

Octantis /ɒktæntɪs/, Alnilam /ælnaɪlæm/, Polaris /pəlɛərɪs/ - The three major cities in the Southern Kingdom are all named after stars. (and yes, Octantis has been repeatedly misspelled by me and yes it took me too long to notice)

As for first names, most of the characters have names that are relatively common in North America... except for the Southerners. We have some loose themes/guidelines when it comes to naming characters from certain kingdoms, and Southerners have both the widest range of name origins and the most unusual names.

Most Southern first names come from either Greek myth or are pulled from stars or constellations. For characters named after stars/constellations, like Kaitos (/keɪtɒs/) and Ancha (/æŋkə/), Wikipedia articles for celestial bodies usually have pronunciation information. For characters named after Greek myth, either the proper Greek pronunciation or the English adaptation is fine to use in my opinion. Technically, the proper reading of Rhea is /riə/, but I find most people including myself read it as /reɪə/.

(...That said, there are a small number of Southerners with names so obscure in origin that I cannot advise readers on how to say them. If an expert on Linear A would like to tell me how “Itaja” is actually pronounced I would be legitimately thrilled to learn more about Minoan script. Until then, your guess is as good as mine, and in absence of better information my own guess is /ɪtɔdʒə/.)

As for surnames, most of those are entirely invented no matter which kingdom they're from (with a few exceptions, like Ancha). Within a kingdom, surnames tend to share a pool of common letters and syllables, but they have no direct tie to real world names or languages (even if I occasionally realize that a made up name shares a spelling with a word in another language, as was the case with Keshet). In my opinion, those are totally up to reader interpretation.

-LS