Let me tell you - getting work done at a Panera Bread is not as easy as it was in university. 

Today I took some time to task out what I'd like to work on for June or the whole of summer, depending on the level of Chaos I deal with.

So, the next update (or updates. This is a lot): 

Encounter and Combat Additions 

There's several bits of feedback that I pulled out of some conversations on Discord. Holistically, this section will solve a lot of them. 

• Parley and Fight options in encounter should carry more risk of failure, and the same should apply to opponents. 
• I'm not sure I want to grant both the player and enemy a chance to escape, but I will work on building those in case they become necessary. (rather, at least improving what currently exists with run, for sure)
• The game should have a solid amount of give and take, so I want to build in the support for the rivals gathering items and using them on their own, as well as them approaching you to barter. This is big and I don't know if I want to really do this, but it's a component of Isle of Power, so I would like to get it into this game and polish it out to prevent more problems in the bigger game. Since players wanted more ways to get essence, this is a way. 
• Shop selling should also be a thing, but will require a reworking of the shop. It should take long, but I will try to do that. The shop's code and markup is cumbersome in TWINE editor.

Game Guide Improvements

This shouldn't take too long, so I might do this first. The game guide could use a bit more to it, as well as a potential facelift. I like leaving things a little opaque and mysterious, but the player should at least have a solid bit of understanding of the relationship of some things.

Image Additions and Improvements

Doing some math, I've determined that I can commission at least two more portraits for the game. I also know the value of backgrounds and other images, so I will need to do those myself. I am not an artist, so the placeholder images are going to be "bad on purpose" style that you see in The Opal of Narsine. 

• The logistics of this are a little complicated, but The top candidates right now are The Thug, The Kobold, and of course, The Rival. It depends on the amount of money I have available and the availability of artists. I'm open to recommendations, but please know that I want to be consistent with art. I am open to gifts.
• Thumbnail technology will let you get the full sized portrait dialogue from any click of a lesser image.
• I'd like to improve the buff and debuff icons, but I'm not sure how I could do that both nicely and consistently.
• Background images - much like TOoN.

If you want to know more - join discord or check out my Patreon!