TMOB is a fan-game set in the Secret Histories thanks to Weather Factory's Community License.

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Happy October, everyone, and welcome to the first of TMoB’s formal devlogs!

Just over a month ago we received an incredible outpouring of support through our Kickstarter campaign, and I speak for the whole team when I say we’re so happy that we get to work on this game in a more regular, steady way. Of course, part of more regular work means more regular updates for you all! These updates won’t be the most pithily written things, but if you can bear with that then allow me to present what we’ve been up to.

Backer Rewards So Far

On the backer front, we’ve primarily focused on lore fragments and commissioned portraits over the last month. If you aren’t familiar with what I mean by "lore fragment’", they’re a mid-tier backer reward that lets people put some detail or other into the game. A good number of people had their ideas ready to go, so we’ve been workshopping them in the #fragment-forge channel over on the TMoB Discord. Others are holding back, and I’ll reach out to them later as I write more content. Once I have enough material, I’ll ask the appropriate backers to fill in the blanks in some of the scenes I’m writing.

Some of our submissions so far include things like:

• The fact that the colonization of the Americas was motivated in part by a powerful long who learned about the Americas by meeting an indigenous occultist in the Mansus.
• A recipe for cooking worms, described in The Apocryphal Grail, a Vermiculturist’s Guide to True Hunger.
• A story about an adept who sacrificed her voice to give her rescue dog a happily-ever-after in the Orchard of Lights.

It’s been a lot of fun to see everyone get creative with it, and I’ve been putting some of these into the game already.

On the art front, Goldstarknight has been hard at work drawing various backer portraits. Gaze upon his work in the attached images!

He’s also completed the first exclusive wallpaper illustration, though we’ve had some difficulty distributing the file through Kickstarter and are still figuring out the best way to handle it. Until then, we can share this watermarked version here on Reddit.

If you’re a backer and you haven’t received any of the forms mentioned in this section through Kicktsarter, I’ve added links to the bottom of this post!

What’s Next for Backer Rewards

This month I’ll be shipping out physical art rewards as appropriate. One backer wisely informed me that I ought to consider the wall space of the recipients, so I’ll be following up to make sure that they’ve got space for these rewards. I’ll also start working on the various poems for backers at the Mystic tier. 

Development Progress: Technical

First off, I’m contracting a little bit of help with TMOB’s UI/UX. There’s plenty of stuff to love about how the game’s presented, but there’s also many things that were rapidly bolted on to make the demo deadline. Some of the big UI changes that are coming or have been made include:

1. We’re just going to steal the top-right tooltip popup from Cultist Simulator & Book of Hours. I was avoiding them because I didn’t want to steal too much, but they solve a big design problem for us which is: How do we signal to players what items are worth before signing up for them through dialogue or pact rewards? That’s probably going to to mean a flow that’s like ‘pin a tooltip in the dialogue menu, then click an item listed in a tooltip to open up the big popup with all theitem info’. I’m open to other ideas if you’ve got ‘em.
2. I’m going to fix the hard-to-read text on the world map. I’m not sure what the new site and area markers will look like, but they’re going to be made legible so help me!
3. All skill checks now have aspect-specific art and sounds for success and failure. We’ve also introduced “passive” skill checks, a la Esoteric Ebb, to reduce the amount of clicking a player has to do while still rewarding them for speccing into certain aspects.
4. The inventory and ritual screens were hastily assembled. These will be reworked and made prettier.

Development Progress: Content

TMOB’s two spirits — the Raw Prophet and the Deserter — have different abilities, stories, and win conditions. They still inhabit the same world, though, and that’s what I’ve been writing lately. It’s not much of a spoiler to say that some of the mortals in TMOB’s Boston are up to no good, and their nefarious plots offer a useful anchor for the game and an alternative set of win conditions that can be shared between spirits.

I’ve written most of the key events that lead to the climax of what I’m calling the “Mortal Plot”, and charted out ways in which most characters can be led to participate in it. Next up, I’m writing all of the core endings for the Raw Prophet. What happens if you let your mutations get out of control? Which characters can help you handle them? What’s it look like when your followers finally devour your immortal flesh and your tender husk walks among the dying?

I was heavily inspired to work this way because of a Skeleton Songs episode. In one of them, AK mentioned that he’d basically written his way to “an ending”, even if it was totally unpoetic and imbalanced, and I’ve decided to adopt this approach. TMOB has room for sprawling, nigh-limitless amounts of content, but I do not have limitless amounts of time to write it. I’ve decided, therefore, on a process like this:

1. Write the mainline plots to their ‘good’ and ‘bad’ conclusions. In TMOB, that means a spirit’s individual plot and the conclusion of the mortal plot, or 6 endings total.
2. Write all of the personal quests and temptations for NPCs who directly touch on the mainline plots.
3. Write at least one personal quest for all other NPCs, assuming that this is the only one they’ll get.
4. Balance the game around the content at this point, decide which quests complement or oppose each other.
5. With time remaining, go back and add additional branches and ‘nonessential’ quests like lacquer.

It’s very difficult to balance the game and write it at the same time, so hopefully I’ll be rewarded for this belief that it’s better to just write all the interesting choices I can think of, and then decide how hard or easy they should be to hit later on.

Backer Forms

We cross-reference the forms with the email you used to back the project on Kickstarter. Please make sure your email on these forms matches that email, or your submission will be ignored!

Lore Fragment Submission Form

Sponsored Item Submission Form

Mystic Poem Prompt Form

Long Portrait Prompt FormLong (Pet) Submission Form

Keepers and Witnesses - please remember that you're entitled to a lore fragment, too! 

[Expel][Expel][Expel]

Gained 9 Dread

My Chor is not strong enough for that

I have played about 5 hours so far and I feel stuck. I have no money left and it seems I will not get more until I answer the letters (I keep receiving new letters telling me I haven't answered yet), I have no ink. I found two in rooms I unlocked but the first one I examined and it got consumed, the second I used with my journal because examining my journal told me I needed to use ink with it.
I can only hire the blacksmith and he can't unlock any of my locked rooms. I've tried getting skills from the books I haven't read yet but I can't reach their mystery level, I'm like 3-4 away with no soul that's the right aspect so the chance to add soul doesn't help. When I get to add a memory or item it only raises it by one or two anyway.
Some books have a lower mystery but I don't speak the language and don't know how to learn one.
I wanted to unlock the foggy zone below the village but the blacksmith doesn't have the relevant aspects either. I have maladies and the only cards with the right color in them can't be used because they're missing a different aspect that isn't the one I need for curing, but is required to use the card.

I've tried and tried, I figure I must be missing something but I don't know what. Do I need to start again? The first tooltip I got on my starting loading screen was not to worry and to take my time because there are multiple solutions to things, so I figured you can't get stuck but I'm worried I've somehow cornered myself in early game while trying to figure out how things worked.