Progress has been slower this month, in part because I'm now working on the ending of the game, and endings are hard.
Endings are especially hard in this kind of branching interactive fiction, because I've got to pull all the different plot threads together, many of which will be different depending on the player's choices, and many of which I haven't written yet. (Contrast with the ending of Beyond the Chiron Gate, which is basically the same every time you reach it—it varies based on choices you make in the endgame itself, but not based on choices you made earlier in the game.)
And endings are hard to write about because I want to avoid spoilers, which is the main reason this is a short dev diary. Although I will just note that many of the space hero stories I'm drawing on culminate in some kind of mass combat, either on the ground or in space.
Once I've got this ending solved, I'll have a complete path through the game written, and then hopefully everything else will fall into place.
Or will it? Learn more in next month's developer diary!
*
Also, the “No ICE in Minnesota” charity bundle is still live on itch.io, and it has a bunch of great games, so please consider getting that if you haven't already.