This time the door really opens

In April I wrote here that the doors were opening a crack. That the first testers would be going in sometime the following week.

That never happened.

The game was not ready for it. A month later I wrote down why: there was an attack in episode 5 that never got played, and when I opened that gap the foundation underneath turned out to be crooked. But that was half the answer. The other half is that I was not ready. It is easy to say you are looking for other eyes. It is something else to hand a story you have carried around for years to a stranger, and then wait.

So I closed the door again and kept working.

What happened since

I went back through every line of episodes 1 to 5, on seven fronts at once. Does the timeline hold. Does a character act the way he would act, not the way it suits me. Does the Dutch run level with the English. Does an echo return at the moment it is supposed to return.

On top of that, fourteen complete playthroughs were simulated to find the paths nobody ever walked. Two of them turned out to be literally unreachable. Those are open now.

None of that work shows up in a list of new things. You only notice it in what no longer happens.

And still I don’t know the thing that matters

Because here is the real point: nobody has ever read this. Not one episode, not one choice, by anyone but me.

Whether the machinery works, I know by now. Whether the story lands, I do not, and I can no longer see it myself. I know every sentence, I know who dies, I know which silence is coming. I cannot open this book for the first time.

And honestly: this frightens me. There are a lot of hours in it, a lot of evenings, and it could all turn out to be for nothing. That risk is real. But it does not get smaller by keeping the door shut for another six months. The only way to find out is to hand it over.

What I’m looking for

The first readers. Literally the first.

People who go through episodes 1 to 5 at their own pace and note down what stands out along the way. Where it catches. A sentence you have to read twice. A choice that turns out not to be a choice. A name you have lost track of. A moment where you think: I have had this already. And just as much the opposite, because I do not know which parts land either.

I do not need a review and I do not need a score. I want to know what happened in your head.

What it costs you

A few evenings, if you play it through. There is no questionnaire attached and no obligation. If you stop halfway, that is information as well: let me know, because the place where you stopped is exactly what I want to hear about.

Taking part costs you nothing. After release the game will not be free, so whoever joins now reads it first and does not pay for it.

You play through TestFlight, Apple’s testing app. You need an iPhone or iPad running iOS 16 or later. The game is 18+, and that is not a formality.

Signing up

There is a sign-up page: everlingeringstories.com/beta. Your e-mail address, and beyond that only what you feel like telling me. After that I invite you personally through TestFlight. I use that address for the invitation and for nothing else, and it goes as soon as the beta is done.

I promised this once already, back in April. This time the door is open.