Hi, everyone! Here’s where all future updates on SALTWATER, news about it’s release, and longer updates on what I’ve been working on will go for the time being. Following me on itch.io will let you get notifications about things I post here, but I’ll be sure to tweet about any new updates as well if you'd rather follow me there.

What is this thing anyways??

SALTWATER is a browser-based narrative game that I am current illustrating and writing for. The reading time of the final game is expected to be ~5 hours, give or take some depending on reading ability. The final game will include several illustrations, such as the ones seen in the screenshots on the game page. Here’s what one of the more recent illustrations looks like without any text:

I started work on SALTWATER during Fall of last year. I was initially playing around with an idea I had that Summer, but started taking things more seriously around November. You can see my initial announcement tweet about SALTWATER here!

How much do you still have to make?

Since announcing SALTWATER, the writing and illustration work needed to finish the project has become much more tangible. Right now, I’m estimating that I am about halfway done with writing the rough draft of the script. The current word count is at just above 20k words in total. I have the rest of the script outlined, but things may not go as expected and the final game might end up being a bit longer or a bit shorter than expected. Once a rough draft is finalized, I’ll have to go through and spend time revising, editing, making it all into something that is hopefully readable.

I’ve held off doing the bulk of the illustration work in order to focus on finalizing the script (it would be a shame if I spent time drawing illustrations that I couldn’t end up using since something changed in the story), but I’ve done ~10 illustrations so far. I expect the final game to probably be closer to ~30+ illustrations in total. 

Other aspects of SALTWATER, such as audio, are currently up in the air for when I feel like I have a rough draft of everything else finished.

Final Thoughts

Looking at a timeline of where I am currently at vs when I started, I’m tentatively hoping to release SALTWATER sometime later this year in 2023! Thank you to anyone who’s shown support or sent a nice message about SALTWATER over the past 3 months, I can’t wait to show you all what I’ve been up to.

- Sky