It’s been a while, but another portrait for The Hidden Sanctum is here, and this time, it’s Minjoon. He’s a bit more glamorous than I originally wanted him to be, but I actually think it suits him.
Fun fact: Minjoon wasn’t originally this pale, but his power takes a really big toll on him (spoilers…), and that’s why he’s always weirdly pale and wears a lot of make up.
The whole thing will be explored later in the story!
I just finished working on the second ‘sneaking out’ scene, and I think the next general demo update should be ready by Thursday or Friday. This will be the last update for the general demo, and the rest will be available on Patreon, and then, in the closed beta.
The first two 'sneaking out’ scenes (Marco and Odyss) are already in the Alpha Build, as I update the build whenever I finish a scene. There is also a poll you can vote in, a post about the history of the Hidden Sanctum, and a Twine mini-game about Sky.
There is also a more detailed update post if that’s something you’re interested in. I note my progress there every day.
I’ve just updated the demo and added the last path event (Ice). This brings Chapter 4 (the last one available in the open beta!) that much closer to the end and leaves me with about 10k words left to write.
This update is also special because it brings the total number of words to 200.000.
Fun fact: Temple of Endless Night is exactly 200.000 words-long.
The update also adds some missing information to the other paths. (In the brackets, when you pick how you want your power to manifest on your body.)
As you can see, my Patreon page is finally up and running. The first posts are already available, and you can check the Table of Contents to see my plans for the rest of the month, as well as for 2022.
For those of you who might not know me, I write interactive fiction (something between a game and a novel), and so far, I managed to finish and publish two games.
The first one is called Temple of Endless Night, and it was published through Hosted Games LLC. The game is a mixture of adventure and horror (and some romance!), and it takes place in a magical version of Ancient Egypt.
The second game is called The Alchemist, and you can play it for free on Itch.io. The Alchemist is an episodic game, but every episode has a separate storyline, and there are no cliffhangers.
I’m currently working on a new project called The Hidden Sanctum, as well as on the next episode of The Alchemist.
Why Patreon?
While I am able to write and create without Patreon support, having to constantly worry about my own well-being and survival takes a big toll on my writing. I have to rush into things, and that’s never good for any creative projects.
With your wonderful support, I’ll be able to fully focus on writing and giving you content, which will make my games more complete. There will be more romantic moments, more friendly conversations, and more choices for your MCs to make.
When you become a patron, you’ll get access to:
Weekly updates on my progress, more detailed than the ones I post on Tumblr. Some will include teasers.
All kinds of polls.
In-depth post about lore (magic, religion, geography, history, etc.)
Twine short stories and mini-games.
The Hidden Sanctum Alpha Build (AB will include Ch. 5-10). (Min. 30k new words per month.)
Personalized short stories with your MC and one of the ROs. (Two highest tiers, limited number of spots.)
Access to other Alpha Builds when they come out.
There will be some other things (maps, extra content for the game), and you can read about them in the goals, right below “About Dariel Ivalyen” on Patreon.
If you want to check out my Patreon site, click here!
If you love my work, but can’t become a patron, do consider sharing this post with other people. It would mean the world to me, and I’d be eternally grateful! (Just like in that Mariah Carey song.) ❤️
I’ve switched things up a bit, and you should all now be able to see the Table of Contents. Thanks to this, you can see what’s available and decide if you’re interested! ❤️
Hi guys! I just opened a new poll on the CoG forum. You can vote for your favorite soul path! If you have a spare minute, please, consider dropping by and casting a vote. I would like to see how popular each of the paths is.
As you can see, my Patreon page is finally up and running. The first posts are already available, and you can check the Table of Contents to see my plans for the rest of the month, as well as for 2022.
For those of you who might not know me, I write interactive fiction (something between a game and a novel), and so far, I managed to finish and publish two games.
The first one is called Temple of Endless Night, and it was published through Hosted Games LLC. The game is a mixture of adventure and horror (and some romance!), and it takes place in a magical version of Ancient Egypt.
The second game is called The Alchemist, and you can play it for free on Itch.io. The Alchemist is an episodic game, but every episode has a separate storyline, and there are no cliffhangers.
I’m currently working on a new project called The Hidden Sanctum, as well as on the next episode of The Alchemist.
Why Patreon?
While I am able to write and create without Patreon support, having to constantly worry about my own well-being and survival takes a big toll on my writing. I have to rush into things, and that’s never good for any creative projects.
With your wonderful support, I’ll be able to fully focus on writing and giving you content, which will make my games more complete. There will be more romantic moments, more friendly conversations, and more choices for your MCs to make.
When you become a patron, you’ll get access to:
Weekly updates on my progress, more detailed than the ones I post on Tumblr. Some will include teasers.
All kinds of polls.
In-depth post about lore (magic, religion, geography, history, etc.)
Twine short stories and mini-games.
The Hidden Sanctum Alpha Build (AB will include Ch. 5-10). (Min. 30k new words per month.)
Personalized short stories with your MC and one of the ROs. (Two highest tiers, limited number of spots.)
Access to other Alpha Builds when they come out.
There will be some other things (maps, extra content for the game), and you can read about them in the goals, right below “About Dariel Ivalyen” on Patreon.
If you want to check out my Patreon site, click here!
If you love my work, but can’t become a patron, do consider sharing this post with other people. It would mean the world to me, and I’d be eternally grateful! (Just like in that Mariah Carey song.) ❤️
As you can guess from the title and from yesterday’s post, the new update is out, and you can play it right now on Dashingdon. While it doesn’t add that much to the number of words per playthrough, it does widen the game by a significant amount.
The biggest thing that comes with the patch is the addition of four new path events (Sun, Mind, Sound, Mischief) to Chapter 4. The Ice path event will come in early April.
While the update mostly focuses on adding new content, it also fixes a pretty big bug in Chapter 2. When your MC was helping Odyss unlock his power, it was only possible to see the end of the scene if your MC was on the Sun path. Now, all other paths have their own versions of the second part of that scene.
The update also fixes some typos and deletes unnecessary commas throughout the game.
As you can guess from the title and from yesterday’s post, the new update is out, and you can play it right now on Dashingdon. While it doesn’t add that much to the number of words per playthrough, it does widen the game by a significant amount.
The biggest thing that comes with the patch is the addition of four new path events (Sun, Mind, Sound, Mischief) to Chapter 4. The Ice path event will come in early April.
While the update mostly focuses on adding new content, it also fixes a pretty big bug in Chapter 2. When your MC was helping Odyss unlock his power, it was only possible to see the end of the scene if your MC was on the Sun path. Now, all other paths have their own versions of the second part of that scene.
The update also fixes some typos and deletes unnecessary commas throughout the game.
I just finished writing the first Patreon-exclusive Twine short story—Sky’s Special Mission—and I simply can’t wait to hear what you think about it. It’s about 4.000 words, and it will give you insight into what happened to Sky and Odyss before they found you in the prologue of The Hidden Sanctum.
MyPatreonlaunches on April 1st (in two days), and you’ll be able to find this story, as well as many other things, there.
As for the updatefor The Hidden Sanctum demo, it’s about 25.000 words long, excluding code, and it will be uploaded tomorrow! It will add events for four of the five paths. The Ice path event is coming at the beginning of April!
Hi guys! I’ve just finished working on the Mischief path event, and I can already tell you that I managed to write about 12.900 words this week. It was a surprisingly productive week, and I actually have some news for you.
Theend-of-the-month update will be up on March 31st, and it will include path events for Sun, Mind, Mischief, and Sound. The last event (Ice) will be added a few days later.
MyPatreonpage will be published on April 1st, and it will include a few different things. Some of them will be up from the get go, while others will make more sense in the following weeks.
Access to all of my previously published content (lore posts, short stories, Twine mini-games, etc.).
Access to the Alpha Build of The Hidden Sanctum. (It will be just like the generally available demo, but it WILL include chapters 5-10, and you will be able to give me more suggestions.)
Access to polls. (They’ll let you pick what types of bonus content you want to see, as well as give me feedback on the Alpha Build.)
Access to lore posts. (There’re already plenty of lore posts that you can go through, but I’ll be making new ones for THS. The first one will be up on April 1st.)
Access to detailed updates and lots of totally new content. (I am currently working on a Twine mini-game that’ll let you play as Sky and learn what happened right before the prologue of THS. These Twine mini-games will replace short stories, they’ll be about 4-5k each, and they’ll appear every month.)
Access to other Alpha Builds (The Alchemist, ChoS, etc.), when I finally get back to working on them.
I think that’s all for today. Hope you all have a great weekend!
Hi guys! I’m just popping in to give you a small progress update. This week was strange in terms of writing, but in the end, I managed to make a decent amount of progress.
The first two path events (Sun and Mind) are done, and they’re a bit over 5000 words each. Overall, I wrote over 10.300 words this week, and now…I’m going to rest until Monday morning.
The new content update is here, and it adds everything I mentioned in my previous post (ca. 11.000 words). Since I won’t be able to finish Chapter 4 by the end of March, the next update (about 20k words) will come near the end of the month, and the last part of the chapter will be added to the demo in early April.
I should probably remind everyone that Chapter 4 is the last chapter that will be available in the public beta. To read chapters 5-10, you’ll have a few options.
PATREONYou’ll be able to gain access to the new content (as well as lots of bonus content) on Patreon. (Coming in early April!)
CLOSED BETA There’ll be around 10 spots for the closed beta that will happen when the first draft of the whole game is finished. It should happen around September.
OFFICIAL RELEASE Of course, you can also buy the whole game from Hosted Games after its release.
Minjoon romance note: You need to stay as long as possible at the end of Chapter 3 and then, in Chapter 4, when you get the option to confront him, you have to pick romantic answers. Otherwise, he won’t trust you in the long run.
The update for The Hidden Sanctum will be out tomorrow.
This week was surprisingly productive, and I managed to write a bit over 11.000 words, excluding code.
In the new update, you’ll need to report to the Oracle and the High Archon about what happened at the end of Chapter 3. You’ll also be able to write a new entry in your diaryandconfront a…erm…certain someone about a certain something you might have seen right before you jumped through the portal in Chapter 3.
You’ll also be informed about a very important decision that might change how things work on the island.
The update after this one will bring new path scenes!
Sorry for being a few days late, but I’m here to give you an update on how everything is going. I wanted to post this on Saturday, but I was really tired, and…well, here we are.
As of today, I have already managed to write the first 10.500 words of Chapter 6, which puts the game at around 264.000 words. The game has also reached ca. 100.000 words per playthrough!
Remember that you can get access to Chapters 5 and 6 (as well as to a looot of other things) through Patreon.
Speaking of Patreon, there’s a new Twine short story coming, and it’ll be out on Monday or Tuesday. You can actually vote on what this very short story will be about in the newest poll!
Alright then. That’s all I have for right now. Take care, and I’ll see you all in a few days with a new post!
Chapter 5 of the Hidden Sanctum is finished, and you can play it now in the Alpha Build.
I’ve just uploaded the last bits of Chapter 5, and the whole thing is about 36.000 words long, which is about twice as long as I wanted it to be. This was supposed to be the shortest chapter… :)
The Hidden Sanctum is also over 250.000 words long, which (for me, personally) is a pretty big achievement.
We have five more chapters to go, but—in terms of story structure—we’ve already moved past the mid-point. This means that your MCs will be going from being reactive to proactive, and that might (well, it actually should) be quite exciting!
As always, there’s some new content on Patreon (a new post about the Sanctum’s teachers!), and you’re absolutely welcome to join us there. That’s also where you can get access to the Alpha Build!
Soo…It’s very possible that Chapter 5 of the Hidden Sanctum will be done by tomorrow evening…
There are some romantic scenes, and the one with Marco even has a suggestive line. It might actually be too suggestive, but…we’re in the Alpha Build, so it’s fineee.
Chapter 5 is about 21.500 words long as of today, and I have another 2200 words written that’ll be added near the end. You can already go through the High Archon’s quarters with Marco, Elena, Sephtis, and Odyss, and the last scene (Sky) will be available tomorrow.
On Saturday, I’ll be working on the second mini game, and next week, it’ll be time for new romantic moments!
When these moments are done, I’ll have one more scene to write, and Chapter 5 will be complete.
There’s a new poll open on Patreon, and you can vote for some Q&A stuff with the ROs. You can also leave questions under the poll, and I am going to use them for the actual Q&A.
April was a very busy month for me, in terms of writing, and I feel like it’ll be a good idea to give you something like a summary that will let you know how things are going.
I added just a bit over 40.000 new words to The Hidden Sanctum in April, and created some extra content for Patreon (see below). About half of that was added to Chapter 4, which is available in the general demo, and the rest belongs to Chapter 5, which can be played in the Alpha Build.
Speaking of Chapter 5, I wanted to finish it by the end of April, but it grew longer than I thought it would, and I still have about 10-15.000 words left to write.
I also managed to add character customization to the game, and it’s available in both the public demo and the Alpha Build.
At the moment, The Hidden Sanctum sits at around 231.600 words, and I hope to reach 270.000 by the end of May. I have already added my May goals to the Table of Contents (on Patreon, but everyone can view it), so you can go there if you want to check them out!
Since we’re already on the topic of Patreon, there’s some new content you can check out even today!
There are two Twine short stories you can play—one about Sky, the other about Mr. Bells—and there are also three lovely lore posts. You can see their names when you go to check out the Table of Contents.
As always, I want to thank all of you for your love and support, and let’s continue on this journey together!
I just wrote the first half of this month’s Twine short story, and I’m really excited about this one. The topic is very cool and relevant, and it’s all thanks to my patrons, as they were the ones who voted for it.
In this story, you get to play as Mr. Edward Bells (your MC’s theater teacher) and find out where he was and what he was doing when he wasn’t able to be there for your theater classes.
The story will be 4000 words-long, and it should be up tomorrow!
I have just updated the general demo for The Hidden Sanctum. While it’s mostly an editorial update, I did rewrite a few paragraphs to make a certain conversation easier to follow (the one with the High Archon, after your trip with Mr. Bells).
I also changed some things in the code to hide spoilers. You may not notice it right away, but I think it was really important.
As for Patreon, I’ve updated the Alpha Build by adding five variations of a scene that will lead you to the first mini-game. There’s also a new poll, and you can pick the next Twine short story I’m going to write!
It’s probably best if you see the Table of Contents for yourself, as it is free for everyone, and I update it daily.
Another week is coming an end, and it’s time for the update. I wrote about 10.000 words this week, and that doesn’t include the new lore post for Patreon (you can read it now!) or a personalized short story I wrote for one of my patrons.
Chapter 5 is coming along very nicely, and it’s going to be a bit longer than I thought it’d be. I am adding two mini-games. One will be at the door to the High Archon’s office (kind of like a lock), and the other will be protecting something that’s hidden inside! ^^
You can play through the first scenes of Chapter 5 in the Alpha Build. There’s also a new lore post available, and this one is about the Veil of Storms. (It doesn’t include spoilers.)
You can check out the Table of Contents right here.
The first few scenes of Chapter 5 are available now in the Alpha Build. It’s not much, but I’ll be adding more later this week. There are unique moments for Sun and Mischief, and you can pick who will join you for the mission. (The one you learned about at the end of Chapter 4!)
I’m also working on correcting some small things in Chapters 0-4, so a small public demo update will be coming in a few days, too.
When a traitor dies, divine souls will give birth to a new world, while the old one will drown in despair, disease, wrath, lust, and madness.
The Hidden Sanctum is a modern fantasy game set in an alternative, more unusual version of our world. Book One takes place in a magical plane called the Hidden Sanctum, where unique people—just like you—are taken to learn the truth about the world and discover their true potential. Are you ready to become a touched soul and find out what fate has in store for you?
When your old neighbor, Mrs. Kendrick, calls you late in the evening and asks you to watch over her daughter for a couple of hours, you have no idea your whole life is about to be turned upside down. The girl arrives at your door, but with her, so does a legion of mechanical soldiers. They’re after you, though you don’t know why. Under fire, you leave your home and start running. But where can you go? Will this be your last journey, or will it be the beginning of your new life?
Play as male, female, or nonbinary.
Be gay, straight, bisexual, or asexual.
Romance or befriend one of six unique characters. Will you get close to one of your fellow students, or will your heart draw you to an ancient Oracle?
Influence how these characters change throughout the game. Will you be kind to them and help them with their problems, or will you push them over the edge?
Choose one of five unique soul paths and reach your true potential!
Shape your personality and views. Every choice will define who you are!
Keep a diary and decide how you feel about certain events!
Explore the Hidden Sanctum and uncover its secrets.
Want more? How about speaking with ancient gods, dealing with mythical creatures, and being a part of a forgotten prophecy?
Will you be strong enough to protect the Hidden Sanctum from danger? What if some of that danger comes from within? What if even people who claim friendship turn out to be traitors? What if you figure out something is wrong, but cannot find any proof?
Current word count:214.8k. Words per playthrough:83.5k.
I’ve just updated the demo (again!), and the biggest thing this update brings is character customization. You can now pick your MC’s hair length, eye and hair color, and skin tone.
You’ll also be able to see a couple of lines about your appearance on the stat page, right below your major.
From other changes, I added two new entries to the glossary, deleted the vigor stat, and broke a large block of text in the prologue (>1200 words) with a flavor choice.
There’s also a brand new post on my Patreon. It’s about The Legion, and while it won’t spoil anything for you (Promise!), it might give you some insight into your main enemy.
TheLAST content update for the OPEN BETA is out, and you can play it on Dashingdon!
As always, the links are at the end of this post.
This update adds about 14.000new words to Chapter 4 and changes some smaller things in the previous chapters. For example, it turns all [Flirt] tags into [Romance].
As for the new content, you can now sneak out with your favorite RO (or friend). There are 4 major scenes available (Marco, Elena, Odyss, and Sky), as well as 2 mini scenes (Minjoon, Sephtis).
You can also play through the last scenes of Chapter 4 and reach the official end of the open beta.
If you love my work and want to get access to new content (including Chapters 5-10), I invite you to join me on Patreon. Chapter 5 should be finished in late April or very early May, and there are lots of other posts and side stories coming!
You can already play as Sky and find out what happened right before they found you in the prologue of The Hidden Sanctum!
Another two scenes are available in the Alpha Build. One of them is about Minjoon (though he doesn’t actually appear in it), and the other lets you sneak out with Elena at the end of Chapter 4.
The Alpha Build also lets you sneak out with Odyss and Marco, and it includes the beginning of the last scene you’ll see in Chapter 4.
Overall, there’s over 10.000 words worth of new content in the Alpha Build, and you can check it out right now!
I believe I should be able to finish Chapter 4 in a couple of days, and this week’s update will be the last content update for the open beta. Chapters 5-10 will be available in the Alpha Build, during the closed beta (this Fall), and, of course, once the game is published.
I hope to finish Chapter 5 by the end of April, as it will be focusing on a single task and shouldn’t be more than 20.000 words.
