#expect our first major revision/update to a pre-existing review since i had no idea these boards EXISTED AND NEVER SAW THEM ANYWHERE

[ducktracy]

contender for most glee i have felt looking at surviving LT storyboards. everyone knows what this is an allusion to, but still, seeing Popeye written out like that gives me insurmountable glee

[quietdaysco]

Primrose Path - Devlog #011

It's a brand new year and a brand new milestone! We've really missed you. Have you missed us? It's so great to be back!

Last devlog we said we were taking a break for the holidays. And we did, but between new jobs, family, college, and festivities, you couldn’t fully keep us away from the dream! All of December and January, we wrote. And now? 

The common route first draft is finished!

For such a wide and important aspect of our project, this is no small feat. We've been at the script for six months counting, and it felt so good to get another step closer every single day. 

Check the facts for yourself:

Main Game Progress

Writing

Common Route: 

Rough Outline: 100% ✓

Revised Outline: 100% ✓

Draft Script: 100% ✓ 

Words: 128,164 

Scenes: 99* / 99 

*Scenes are counted when they are ready for internal review, qualifying them as complete for the first draft.

Did you see that number? Yes, it's not a mistake. The common route is over 128,000 words! We love every part of it and we're very proud, but the journey isn't over yet. 

You might be thinking: “All that and you've only done the common route?!”

Yeah—it's a long journey, but one that we're happy to share with you! 

Since this is a major milestone, we wanted to share a few words of our experience until now:

Elm says...

I feel simultaneously relieved, proud and dead inside and, like all creatives and developers, I hope I get to keep feeling like this as we continue to hit milestones. Primrose is definitely something I consider to be too big a project, but I also refuse to let it go. It is a learning experience and a proud moment. As someone who has written things, but never really considered themselves a writer, this is a surprising feat and one that fills me with a great sense of calm. If I knew one day, I'd be working a full-time industry job with the typical hours and somehow managing to write over 65,000 words in just under half a year in my scarce free time, I would have said that's nice, but unrealistic. (If you told me I was going to work with someone else and double that, I might have told you to politely close the door on your way out.)

Nonetheless, I think I finally found my calling as the child who wrote manuals and to do lists before approaching middle school. Developing baselines are important for any project, and without it, I don't know where we would be. I remember saying, rather casually, we should be tracking our progress to establish a baseline as this is a first for us. I didn't realise it would be such an integral part of our process and leading to an understanding of what we can achieve. It started off as a nice thing to have, but without it I strongly believe I wouldn't be able to finish a project. That's not so uncommon, I think. We all have that pile of unfinished things that we don't expect. Except this time, I'll see it coming a mile away and work around it.

How much did data help us? I don't know. Our current average is 21,000 words a month between us. That's including a very low December, and a very high (39,000-word) January. I don't know if that's because our goals averaged at 20,000 more words a month, or if that's genuinely our limit, but it seems to be a healthy rate to allow us to do other things with our time.

I've always had an interest in production and management, a change in self has come over over the past year. One that is more confident, positive, understanding and encouraging towards myself and others. Creating a project is less like tending a well-oiled machine and more like cultivating a garden. Cogs wear down and get replaced, but people don't work like that. We need space and understanding, time to reflect, encouragement and the ability to know when we've had enough. I'm sure that shift of thought is just me developing a stronger sense of self, but it's one that I welcome and I hope will be reflected in the work I produce with Coda.

In the past, I've adamantly liked to work alone. I've wanted to push myself to the high standards I hold myself to, and I do feel it's unfair to treat anyone but myself like that. I still think this is true, but there is also pleasure in sharing work with others. When you're tired, someone else can carry the project forward. When you split the work, the other brings in an interesting and exciting twist you hadn't yourself considered. I truly believe, some of the best work isn't created alone.  With everything we do, we bring a little of ourselves into it and we make it personal. This story is significant in size for two people to attempt, but there are bigger, emergent narratives out there and maybe one day we can be a part of that too.

Until then, I'm happy to just make the kind of games that you load up on a quiet day.

Coda says...

This is the first time I’ve ever written this much content for a story in my life. 57,000 words in half a year. As much as I’ve entertained trying out hypernarrative models in personal projects, this is the first time I’ve actually done so. This is also the first time I’ve ever worked with Elm, and if I didn’t have such a competent, versed, and approachable partner, this passion project would have quickly become an untamed chore, much farther behind in progress than where we are today.

I’ve learned a lot over the past six months. I’ve been learning how I reframe my motivation to work so that I’m not chasing whims but developing a self-disciplined ethic. For me, that heavily involves pre-planning and tracking explicit goals. Elm operates similarly having such a strong interest in project management, so building up our workflow this way was to both of our benefits.

I’ve learned that I have a growing interest in narrative design. I’m spending more and more of my free time listening to lectures on theories and models to leverage player interactivity and agency, reading materials on mapping consequence, utilizing channels other than dialogue to exposit information, and learning new ways to breathe life into a scene.

And in deconstructing these concepts and figuring how to incorporate them, I find myself growing more and more with the characters. These characters are all stitched together from personal experiences—some as recent as these past couple months. They’re also those of friends and family, of passersby, of vocal strangers. They’re things I love, things I tolerate, and things I could do without yet exist. They’re research of facts, opinions I might share or reject, and trivia. These characters are points to make, and those points evolve and refine as we do.

My final thoughts are, whatever this project ends up becoming, I’ve enjoyed it so much. There are times when Elm and I have glanced at each other’s scenes and for me at least, I’ve had genuine reactions that’ve run the gamut. I have honestly gasped at these words before. I’ve laughed a great deal. I’ve nodded along and I’ve shaken my head. I’ve felt something. Whoever you are, reader, I hope you will too.

We hope these words mean something to you. If they don’t resonate, then at least they give you an idea of who we are as individuals and as a team!

So, what are our next steps?

We’re reconvening to address any pressing concerns.

The next few weeks will focus on a review pass for consistency and game flow.

Afterwards, we’ll move onto the final revision of the common route, assess, and then mark it “Done” once and for all! We'll have something else to offer once we do!

Oh, before we forget...

Here’s the last of our favorite unrevised snippets from these final two months:

RAFAEL: You've done me a wonderful favour. RAFAEL: And maybe saved my life. MC: Does it have something to do with the two over there? He glances over woefully. RAFAEL: No, they'll definitely try to kill me.

PRIYA: Someone is spreading a rumour that you had to meet with two extremely questionable kids in a trench coat. MC: God, is that what people are saying? PRIYA: No, that's what I'm saying, and if you don't fess up the rumour will only grow.

HARPER: It's a restraining order. HARPER: Been a while since I've seen one of those. This branding is nice, don't you think?

One of the pheasants stops and stares at us. It spreads its wings, revealing the second pair beneath them in a captivating display.

He buttons up his blazer. JUN LAU: (squint) Stop staring. MC: Literally, are you one to talk? JUN LAU: I’m not staring at your tits though, so don’t stare at mine. MC: Oh my God, I wasn’t even looking! It’s a lie because I totally was and I look so dumb for lying because he can read it all over my face, oh crap. Walk right past him, just walk, go go go go.

A light flurry falls from the night sky. The moon gazes through a break in the clouds, just enough to line them and every drifting snowflake in silver. A few flakes land on my nose and eyelashes.

I hum for brown paper packages tied up with strings. He recognizes the tune and smiles at me.

If this is the kind of content you like to see, we’d love for you to jump into our Discord server! We occasionally share much longer unrevised excerpts and discuss the game in much more depth with our community.

Behind The Scenes

Greyson Update

We’ve finally nursed Greyson back to health from a nasty bug, and upgraded him to the newest OS (as it goes with tech these days). He seems ready to get back out there on Twitter and help in March! 

One thing we noticed about the old Greyson is despite being cheerful, he spent nearly all of his time talking to himself, not utilizing the tools available to him to increase his presence. With his recent bug fixes, the new Greyson is now going to be out there actively searching for folks in need of some encouragement, widening his reach! If you get a message from Greyson, feel free to reply back! After all, he’s always there for you!

Side Projects

Clearly, Primrose Path is a large project and one that means a lot to us. We're under no illusion that this project will take a few more years. It's a little like our magnum opus in that regard and we're giving it everything we've got.

However, we're not the type who can sit in the dark for years on end. At Quiet Days, we recognize the benefits and importance of personal projects, and that is something the two of us will be doing more often. Whether it's game jams or comics, we hope to share them with you!

We’re focusing on monthly devlogs for our Tumblr, but we have to ask: Are there other kinds of content and updates you folks would like to see here? We want to know! Shoot us a message in our Ask the Devs inbox here on Tumblr, or hit us up on Twitter, Discord, and Lemma Soft!

Socials

• Micro-updates on Twitter!  ♦ Factoids with Greyson! • Writing Progress on GitScrum! • Live art development on Twitch! • Art logging on Instagram! • Ask us anything here! • Continue the discussion on Discord! • Master thread on Lemma Soft!