It’s been a busy, somewhat stressful few weeks since the Coronavirus hit. I just happened to leave China three days before it first appeared in the news—and since then, Guangzhou (my home for two years) has risen to the second largest number of infections. Fortunately, I’ll be staying in America until February 20^th, though it’s impossible to know what things will be like when I go back.

While doing my best not to worry about the Coronavirus, I’ll be spending the next few weeks prepping The Pale City for release! Most ominously, I’m about to start messaging journals and youtubers and hopefully get a few reviews. This is always a stressful, unpleasant process, but at least it will be much cheaper and easier than sending out books.

I’ve also just finished one last burst of development on the game, thanks to two early testers. The first was my cousin, Patrick Muntz, who gave the game an absolutely incredible proofread, and also inspired me to add a few extra battles in certain areas of the game. After years of writing weird, often difficult or alienating novels, it felt incredible to just give The Pale City to someone in my family and have them play and enjoy it.

The next was Kumada from RPGmaker.net, who played the proofread version of the game. He gave me a long list of very detailed comments that helped to refine the balance of the game and iron out some places where my game design was a bit too opaque. (He was also looking for typos, but seems not to have found any!) He was also the first person to play the game who I didn’t already know beforehand, which seems like a really important milestone to cross!

Not much else for the moment, but more updates coming soon!