Welcome gamers, game devs, writers, and all enjoyers of quality narrative games. Today’s devlog is about character writing and my methods! We’re diving into the deep end and I am VERY excited to talk about my favorite aspect of writing! This one has been HIGHLY REQUESTED!🔥🔥🔥

🔥✨OBLIGATORY DISCLAIMER:✨🔥

My process for writing my branching video game is not a statement about best writing practices for literally anyone. This is not a tutorial. I am not giving advice. This devlog is for the curious, your entertainment, and a close look into my personal writing process. I hope you find it insightful or amusing, but I must stress I’m here to share what helps me at this point in development! I’m doing so by conveying my process and sharing many memes along the way, nothing more.

⚠️Also one more disclaimer! BIG spoiler warning. I will be using ample excerpts from my writing, discussing a few character arcs in broad strokes, and giving transparency into the foundational characterization of the MC for my game. These are all inherently spoilers!⚠️

⚠️If you would like to play Catalyst: Blind Faith unspoiled, I’ve got more normal devlog content afterwards, with plenty of progress and things to come in the next month! You can ctrl+f “Updates on Catalyst: Blind Faith’s Development.” to skip straight to that spoiler-free content.⚠️

🔥🔥🔥Let’s gooooo!🔥🔥🔥

Huge thanks to you and all my patrons for the support in these VERY TRYING times. Having food and help with my medicine is literally priceless. This devlog was released a week early for them as usual as big thanks. It’s available for everyone and you can see all high res images there! No support is small right now!🤍❤️🧡💛💚💙💜🖤 I hope you enjoy!

There is no additional reading needed for comprehension of this devlog, but if you would like further reading on my process and the development of CBF anyways, you can easily check out the prior entries in this narrative devlog series in this very pretty collection here.

We’re almost at the end of some advanced topics I’m thrilled to discuss! My prior narrative devlogs covered a very broad amount of content, from basic branching narrative design 101 up through time travel! Individual links below for ez bookmarking on itch.io if you want lol, they can be read in any order:

1. Narrative Design and the Branching Structure of Catalyst: Blind Faith!
2. Common Route Mechanical Madness + All Routes Preview
3. Merciful Game Design - The “Trunk” of Catalyst: Blind Faith’s Branching Narrative
4. Punishing Game Design (VENGEANCE)
5. Timey Wimey Game Design (Yes it is complicated)
6. Quality Writing Techniques (My Beloved)

Strap in. I finally get to talk about the psycho shit, including the VERY FREQUENTLY REQUESTED dive into how I handle writing unreliable narration!

✨EZ NAVIGATION✨

✍️Intro | 485 words | 1 image <- (You are here!)

✍️🔥 Consistent Characterization in a Branching Game | 984 words | 3 images

✍️🔥🔥 Variable Characterization in a Branching Game | 1474 words | 8 images

✍️Updates on Catalyst: Blind Faith’s Development | 1191 words | 15 images

✍️Outro | 273 words | 0 images

✍️🔥 Consistent Characterization in a Branching Game

Alaric’s Difficulty Rating: ✍️🔥 First-time Dark Souls playthrough. Chill for 98% of the run, shouting and celebrating after every difficult boss fight. Doable in almost any situation with enough focus and perseverance!!

Consistent characterization is mandatory in any cohesive story. But branching games are a beast, dear reader. I use a few tools in my toolkit to make it easier. Much like I wanted to use a mace and shield my entire run, but brutally beat Gwyn, Lord of Cinder to death by whipping out a claymore whenever it was needed.

EACH CHARACTER HAS A PURPOSE IN THE NARRATIVE ⚔️🔥

This is their preferred playstyle, so to speak. Much like my unrelenting desire to beat Lord Gwyn in the face with a melee weapon, and my adamancy to use melee weapons for every boss fight. These are constants the character will achieve by any means necessary, or they’re just not the same character:

• Ray the dog is our straight man. *Yes you heard me. *The player’s partner in crime is a direct foil for damn good reason. Ray is ALWAYS the straight man to Richard’s lunacy. This DOES NOT CHANGE. That is Ray’s primary purpose in the narrative!
• Lord Yech the Disgusted is also a foil to Richard. If you reach him, the player has firmly established their worst proclivities, and Yech is meant to mirror them. This is meant to frame a compelling antagonist who will deeply challenge the player, and encourage them to indulge in THEIR worst impulses. Yech being a terrible influence is the heart of his character! This is a constant! Yech never, ever, ever will have a sobriety arc in this game! Having him tempt Richard near the end of the journey is his purpose in the narrative!

THERE ARE FOUNDATIONAL ASPECTS OF EACH CHARACTER (THESE WILL NOT CHANGE) ⚔️

Characters are more than their narrative function. I like complex characters just as much as I like complex boss fights.

Might lose some readers here, but bear with me. We’re getting into the more complex stuff right away!

Much like my arsenal of mace, shield, claymore, medium/heavy armor, and healing miracles in Dark Souls 1, characters can have many pieces in their personality kit too! Much like using many tools to uphold a set playstyle, all of the elements of my characters serve to uphold their purpose in the game:

• Ray is attentive and extremely loyal, but his courage falters when there is serious danger. Ray will NEVER lead the player into a lethal situation, he will ALWAYS be attentive to Richard’s needs, but he will NEVER flee when his friends are in danger. This is a hard foil(!) to Richard’s literal suicidal recklessness. This means in all events Ray is ALWAYS heroic. It ALWAYS elevates the narrative, in sharp contrast to the MC’s antiheroic to villainous behavior. No matter how the game unfolds, Ray’s courage, loyalty, and clear telegraphing of danger are ironclad things I never change!
• Yech is literally a demon, with a core defining trait of generosity. He’s a voluntary hermit due to the extreme threat he poses to others. His strong desire to not hurt others, but inability to control this aspect of himself completely makes him very mild by the game’s standards for demons, but he is still very dangerous. Yech will ALWAYS indulge the opportunity to give to others, and that is something I NEVER change! The means by which he does so is highly situational, however. Based on the way the player interacts with this hermit, this foundational aspect of his personality can manifest as friendly and harmless to literally demonic.

CHARACTERS HAVE ARCS (SOMETIMES) AND WHEN THEY DO I WRITE THEM DELIBERATELY⚔️🔥

My willingness to forgo a pure mace and shield run to try the claymore, falling in love with it, and ultimately using it in my winning fight against Gwyn is a character arc. This all upheld my original goals, but was a richer and deeper experience than if I had stuck to the exact same playstyle for all of Dark Souls 1!

Character arcs are awesome, and an integral part of most character’s stories. When I write these kinds of changes, I do them deliberately and with enormous intention:

• As you might have guessed by these two extremely contrasting examples, Ray is a bastion of stability in the game. His purpose and function does not change. Ever. Ray being a good boi is an absolute constant of the universe and it will always stay that way! (It can be good for some characters to not undergo huge change.)
• Conversely, Yech is an adversarial foil from the first second you meet him, but his characterization always evolves over the course of his encounter. The premise for meeting him always benefits from the player’s actions making an impact on him! This remains the case whether Yech’s monstrous behavior gets significantly worse, making him a full blown antagonist; if he becomes an unlikely or temporary ally; or if he becomes the player’s diehard friend. In all of these wildly varying cases, I build off of his underlying character traits, as you do with good story telling. He has extreme depth and can undergo massive change within the context of each story the player experiences. This is why I say this is one, BIG game. His separate character arcs all stem from the same meeting, and seeing how different stories can evolve from that same starting point is all the fun of a branching game!

Moving ahead! No brakes! We’re very far beyond branching narrative 101!!!!!! (But feel free to crack open those prior devlogs if you’re interested in more mechanics and branching narrative design talk)

✍️🔥🔥 Variable Characterization in a Branching Game

Alaric’s Difficulty Rating: ✍️🔥🔥 100% completion of Long Live the Queen. There are no complete guides on how to do this. My ass WILL have a checklist at minimum, once I get the hang of the basic gameplay loop. I WILL be dumping hours into planning. I will try, and fail, and try again until I get it right.

There is no hope of getting a run right on the first try, no matter how much I wrinkle my brain, but it’s worth every failed attempt until I reach whatever insane goal I’ve set out to achieve. Players like me appreciate it, and it’s my biggest joy to see the many ways the same characters’ stories can play out.

Get comfy, brave reader. Bear with me, I’m going somewhere with this. 🔥🔥🩸

Much like the 42 unique skills in Long Live the Queen... All of which can be trained at one of two times a day in each in-game week... hat factors into skill checks in every single in-game day... For 40 in-game weeks... That at any time can lead to an early ending and fate worse than death... All of which can cause permanent branches in the game’s narrative... With the same cast of characters, in roughly the same main events, all within a specific period of time...

Long Live the Queen utilizes beautiful brevity and very short scenes to enable the monstrous amount of skill checks presented to the player. It’s almost like a puzzle, to discern what skill checks come up at various times.

I also love to do this kind of batshit insane gameplay, but with a lot less stat raising, and a lot more narrative implementation.

Same character, different characterization. Neat, right?

When I’m writing characterization across numerous timelines, I want deliberate differences to emerge, and I telegraph when they’re coming about CLEARLY. It’s not classes you take on each day of the game, but comes about from all of the choices you make.

And boy howdy, do you get a lot of choices.

Same character, different characterization. Neat, right?

**F****AMILIAR BEHAVIOR + DIFFERENT CONTINUITIES = DIFFERENT OUTCOMES **🔥🔥🩸

When a scheming noble is plotting behind your back in Long Live the Queen, you know you can’t trust them. All because they are consistent doesn’t mean the world and the game has to be, though. Just how their devious scheming is going to potentially get you killed can vary greatly, based on any given situation!

The same principle applies for all of my characters in Catalyst: Blind Faith. EXAMPLE:

• In some branches of the game, Ray may rarely, if ever hear loud noises. It’s extremely reasonable for him to be frightened by loud sounds, and is one of his biggest fears. This is well established! When Ray seems unreasonably afraid, it’s still consistent and trustworthy. Hell, it’s still reasonable. This can be a huge signal to Richard (and the player) to slow down and take fewer risks too.
• In other combinations of events, the player may be in such frequent peril that Ray telegraphing danger is no longer reliable. It’s the same characterization, and the same behavior, but due to external circumstances, is not a reliable tell for Richard and/or the player. If the world is literally on fire/when the player is in a truly lethal environment, they may not use Ray as a reliable judge of danger at all! What can they trust???
• Even if Ray seems totally fine, the player may also love Ray and want to protect him so dearly, they will go out of their way to avoid danger no matter what scenario they’re in. That stability is there for good reason, because it’s the player’s choice how they personally behave in a game where EVERYTHING ELSE might be perilous or untrustworthy!

If this sounds stressful and involved, it’s because it’s meant to be. All because there are no wrong choices in a branching game doesn’t mean they have to feel easy. Strong characterization lets the player focus on what they can’t trust. (Like the many dangers a horror and dark fantasy game presents.) 😉🔥🔥🩸

**DELIBERATE, DIFFERING BEHAVIOR IN ALL OTHER WAYS **🔥🔥🩸

Pretty much every other event is going to lead to big changes in characterization. Rather than compare and contrast the 45 achievements in Long Live the Queen, its insane amount of branching, and dozens of epilogues, let’s get right to the examples from CBF!

The most frequent deuteragonist in CBF, Ofelia, is going to help us out. Being helpful and proactive is kind of her thing.

• You are held at knife-point by Ofelia in almost all of your first encounters with her. 😬She’s a rogue with a heart of gold, so whether she keeps you at knife-point the entire game (literally or metaphorically) is up to you! 😬 Her inherent heroism is not wholly dependent on Richard’s actions, but she is DEFINITELY more inclined to be kind to the player if they don’t behave like a monster. 😬😬😬
• Ofelia has an entire hard branch dedicated to befriending or attempting to romance her. (Really!) We can do the enemies to lovers thing if you really, really, REALLY try, and it’s a joy to see her character arc in lighter and more pleasant circumstances—if you seriously are willing to fight for helping both of you above all other things.💖🗡️
• Likewise, if you go out of your way to act abominable, Ofelia will hardly overextend herself to help you. She’s proactive and helpful for the people she cares about, after all! When shit utterly hits the fan in the ruins (and the player is to blame), she will usually spring to preserve her life and the lives of her allies before Richard or Ray. 😔🗡️ She has her own story, her own motives, and her own complex characterization. If you are enough of a villain, she might step up to stop you at any cost. We can even flip our protagonist and antagonist, if you drive Richard to low enough lows! 😔🗡️

**LET’S TALK ABOUT THE EXTREMES **🔥🔥🩸

This does mean that in the same game, we can have characters seen in completely different lights. This usually means the ending for most games!🩸

Much like in Long Live the Queen where MANY achievements are attained by shaping Elodie into a violent, cruel dictator, I let players explore many of our antihero’s darkest inclinations at great length.🙂🗡️

Testing the limits of the Gods, twisting the definition of Mercy, and deliberately exploring very hectic and mature content is the name of the game! It’s a sizable amount of Catalyst: Blind Faith, and my joy is not abruptly ending the story when you have fucked around and found out.🙂🩸

It may comes as no surprise that in a game centered around compassion, one of its biggest themes are persevering in the face of seemingly impossible odds. That includes if you push Richard into utterly abhorrent behavior at the lowest point of his life, sometimes over and over again. 🔥🔥🩸EXAMPLES🔥🔥🩸:

• Say if you want to indulge one of Richard’s many, many violent impulses, and your allies recognize you are an extreme threat to the safety of others. This can uplift a secondary character into a heroic antagonist, and place Richard firmly as a villainous protagonist.😔🗡️
• Our MC is an antihero by default. Your allies can join you in a morally ambiguous journey, and their character arcs can cover every shade of gray along the way.
• Many abrupt endings and deaths are still possible! Richard’s heroism and villainy alike can lead him to many grisly ends. The way that characters can respond to this will differ massively, often based on how extreme his actions are too.🙂🩸
• Suffice to say that this is the reason for the game’s extensive branching. Just like how raising or not raising certain stats at the start of Long Live the Queen can permanently bar you from certain chunks of the game, Catalyst: Blind Faith builds on prior choices too.💪🔥
• You will not see Richard as a 🚴twisted cycle path🚴 in the same playthrough as him smooching Ofelia. 💖🗡️You might see a glorious rise to heroism after a morally gray beginning, but more often than not, two or more unique playthroughs are where you’ll see this vastly differing characterization. These are wildly differing stories, and require radically different choices—often ones that build on each other. 💪💪🔥

C**ozy checkpoint, fellow narrative writing gamers🔥

Y**ou did it!🔥🔥

Congratulations to those of you who read through this whole post so far. I hope you found it insightful, amusing, or otherwise enjoyable to read. Big looking forward to digging into two even spicier writing subjects next month!!

It was way too much for one devlog lol

Q**uick level up and gear check before we tackle the boss fight.🔥🔥🔥

G**ot autosave on this one for your mighty progress🔥🔥🔥🔥

L**ets gooooooooooooooo!🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥

✍️Updates on Catalyst: Blind Faith’s Development

I originally had two more subjects in this devlog: Second Person Perspective and Unreliable Narration. Though that content is almost fully written, due to its length, I am saving it for next month’s devlog! I think it will greatly help with comprehension and to avoid fatigue.

That narrative devlog will be next month, and will be the last one discussing conventional writing methods! They are both extremely difficult monsters to tackle, and I hope you look forward to seeing it!

This big narrative devlog series will conclude in 2026, where I’ll do a two-part devlog on the sensitivity concerns going into Catalyst: Blind Faith AT LONG LAST! Literally every single other devlog I have written in this series has been intended to promote the extreme love and care going into all other facets of its writing. That sensitive content is not there for shock, but to uplift the game and its foremost theme of compassion.❤️‍🔥 I’m very excited to dive into that too!

I’ve been very hard at work on development for Catalyst: Blind Faith, and have some cool updates to share below! A lot of this was strictly for us in Just Write Studios. Patrons got access to this devlog’s content a week early as always, as huge thanks for their support! I hope you enjoy the sneak peeks too!!!

ART

• Began work on style tests for the game’s art! Pressure is very high on me to get it as close as possible to what I would like for the finished game, despite being a newer artist, as the Steam page **must **be a reliable reflection of the full game’s look.
• I got all the UI mockups on the canvas for positioning elements, text, and other things for height placement that are used throughout the game!
• Anatomy has been ironed out for Richard’s default sprite! It was a 😉TALL ORDER😉
• Some progress below! Got the start of it here and that nice anatomy. This is a HEAVY WIP and not reflective of the final style for the sprite and BG in the slightest, but I’m happy to share a teaser with you all!

COMMUNITY

• You all are superstars. I asked for any and all suggestions for references while I am working on Richard’s default sprite, as he has tons of details on his design, and the more refs I can amass the merrier! His concept has been done for some time, but I am better armed and ready for all the things still to be drawn! (Turtleneck, coat, belts, glorified fanny pack for his journal, boot details, backpack, the rest of his flanged mace and shield, holy symbol, and obviously all these things will be done with the final rendering/coloring style). We had a killer time assembling a gauntlet of those beautiful references!
• I wrote up character bios, a plot synopsis, a meme rap prompt, and a setting introduction for a lovely 18+ writing server! I’ll be participating with them during November for some events while I blast through script writing.
• Made a glorious mood board for the Goddess of Agriculture for an additional writing server. She stood in as the grim reaper in various writing projects, who made a meme prompt for fun with their characters meeting her after death or during near death experiences!!💀💚

The original image is 10000 pixels wide😂 Had to crunch this to oblivion to fit on itch. High res version is available in the og post for freeeee for anyone who wants to see any of the pics in this devlog in more detail!

• Ran a community poll for a new chapter title in the Vengeance hard branch! “Exsanguination” was the winner!
• By request, we are holding a server-sanctioned “Hear Me Out” meme discussion in the community Discord.😂❤️
• Been doing script readings with our community Discord in VC as well! It helps my editing process to read aloud, and getting to share my process while editing some of the most difficult content in the game has been very motivating!
• Had a huge amount of fun unwinding from some of that ultra hectic writing and ultra challenging art content with making some of the game’s characters in Heroforge! Shared a few images above, here are a couple more below. Top row to bottom row is Ofelia, Richard, and Yech. Had to take quite a few creative liberties lol (NO CODPIECES???) but was a joy to do ❤️

PROGRAMMING

• Me and a much smarter friend worked tirelessly for two straight days to finally write up a regex that allows me to quickly strip all code and comments from the script of CBF!
• This is so I can get an accurate word count of only the text seen by players during development. It’s something I have avoided doing for a long while, since it’s a built-in function in Ren’Py once the script is coded, and I only care about pacing in the game, not how many words each chapter is arbitrarily.
• However, participation with other writers in many events mandates me providing a word count, and I have been manually cutting this stuff out for my critique group, open mics, etc. It IMMEDIATELY came in handy and allowed me to participate in an open mic on the fly last weekend!
• There are over 140 chapters for the full game at this point in time! Thanks to me being able to grab the accurate word count FAST now with regex, it only takes few seconds per chapter. I will still be putting that count in my personal spreadsheet too, and thought it would be fun to do in VC this coming month.
• I’m going to make a little betting pool for us all to guess what the game’s script is at (for players) so far in the community Discord, and I’ll share some thoughts about the game’s development and chill while doing this tedious little thing on my end! The Word Count Betting Event is live!! Feel free to come join us in the community Discord. Fan content of any level of effort is welcome to ante in, and we’ve got prizes of character art and flair roles for the winners!! Already seen some killer stuff and having a blast 😊❤️‍🔥🔥

*Comments, code, text tags, navigation, and other things not seen by the player so that editors have sufficient context is just a tiiiiny bit of the word count in the scripts, even before they go into VSC. Juuuust a smidge. Juuuuust like 40-80% of any given “chapter.”😉

---

WRITING

• The unholy 100+ comments threshold was reached and resolved for Chapter 26-3, which is fully written and edited!
• Writing and editing on Chapter 27-3 is COMPLETE! Reminding players succinctly of important context (from an encounter in the common route, to account for all permutations of events to get there) took longer than writing the entirety of the chapter’s first draft did, so worth it tho💀💀🔥🔥🔥
• Writing and editing for Chapter 28-3 is also COMPLETE
• First draft for Chapter 29-6 is COMPLETE! It has over 13 unique scenes with mucho variable characterization based on prior choices. 🔀🔥 Will be editing this one for a hot minute to make it as crisp and clear as possible!
• First draft for Chapter 30-6 is COMPLETE!! This is one of the only chapters I have ever written out of chronological order, I was so motivated to get it done! It is small but mighty.💪💀🔥
• That’s a whopping 35.5k words for all comments, code, and script across those three finished chapters! 7,601 words for the 2 WIP chapters. As you can see in the screenshot of script above, that is in NO WAY a reflection of the narrative the player sees, but is still a lot of hard work that I am thrilled to have done!

OUTRO

Things in store for November!

• I have many things IRL taking up an extreme amount of time to try to make ends meet. Art progress will be slow and steady when I can make the time for it and have the spoons!
• More VCs to come with script reading while I edit!
• Blasting through the full game’s script this month, so lots of writing this November while I participate in two writing events to keep motivation high!
• Continuation of the server-sanctioned “Hear Me Out” meme discussion through this week, ofc😉❤️
• When I need a break from writing and editing, I’ll be making that betting pool for the length of the game’s script in our community Discord!The Word Count Betting Event (which needs a cooler name) is running until the final word count is tallied! I have the event open in our Community Discord at least through the end of November—by my best estimates, running the regex will take a solid five hours or more to do one chapter at a time, thanks to the size of the WIP script!
• Next month’s devlog will cover the remaining character writing subjects I wanted to cover (second person perspective and unreliable narration). I’ll also be sharing progress on all of this November writing!! 💪🔥🔥🔥

Whew! We did it! Thank you so much again for reading. I’m glad I sliced out those extra two subjects from this one, and hope you are looking forward to seeing that in next month’s devlog, plus all the other stuff I have in store!

Though I wish with all my heart I could be working on this project full time, sharing my progress with CBF’s development in big strokes is a joy beyond measure. 🤍❤️🧡💛💚💙💜🖤 Thank you so much for your support and for reading!

Feel free to slam the like button, share any comments, questions, or any other thoughts in the comments here or in our Community Discord!

I hope you have a wonderful rest of your month, and had a very happy Halloween!!!

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