Resident Anna's Summer Vacation: Redjackets Edition

Resident Anna will be taking a couple months off so Anna can launch her game!

Greetings, Fellow Mortals…

As you can see by the title, Resident Anna is going to take a few months off from our monthly Posting so I can focus on shipping my personal game project Redjackets, which (pending no disasters, knock-on-wood), will release as part of the 20204 Interactive Fiction Competition (IFComp) on September 1st.

The articles that I’ve been posting on the first of each month for more than the past year have been such a joy to write, but they do take a considerable amount of time and brainpower that, on top of my day job working as a video game writer, I fear I will need to put on hold until I get Redjackets out the door.

Redjackets is a Twine-based interactive fiction project, focusing on 3 protagonists. The game is designed to be played three times from the characters’ three different perspectives - but beware, choices you make in your previous playthroughs will radiate into the other two protagonist’s paths should you go back and play theirs later.

Redjackets takes place in the inner workings of a rather unusual vampire hunting firm of the same name. It’s usual because the “hunters” are much more interested in finding solutions so that humans and vampires and humans can successfully coexist. The Redjackets themselves are comprised of a staff of human and vampire members, who seek creative solutions surrounding conflict resolution, mediation, restorative/transformative justice, establishing diplomacy channels, and the like.

…And yes, they do wear red jackets. The vampire members of the team do, anyway. It’s a long story.

…Did I mention it’s huge.

A screenshot of merely a fraction of all of the nodes in the Twine file. You can see the clear break between the end of Act 1 and the start of Act 2!

I have completely written 2 of the 3 acts, and it’s currently over 200 passages. It is, quite frankly, entirely too big. So when it comes to working a day job and trying to finish this… I hope you understand why the articles are going on the backburner for the next couple of months.

I of course know that there are some of you who choose to support me via paid subscription (thank you!), so I completely understand should you choose to remove your paid subscription for the time being, if not indefinitely. Listen, the economy is rough out there and you gotta do what you gotta do!

In the meantime, thank you, as always, for reading Resident Anna. This isn’t goodbye, I’ll be back soon!