Alohamora friends,

And so concludes volume one of Alpha Tester. Hope you enjoyed. I certainly enjoyed writing it, though my god do I struggle writing endings. I think it's good, but right around the 80% mark, the doubt sets in, and all the different ways to end it start cropping up. Should I do it this way, or maybe that way? Or maybe I should start a whole different story just to avoid this quandary.

Annoyingly, I didn't change much from my original plan, which meant I just wasted a lot of time hemming and hawing for no good reason. Bah! Glad this one's behind us.

I have also been missing doing reader interactive, and I really would like to incorporate it into this story. Unfortunately, after speaking with a few wise friends, I think I will refrain. This story is a touch too complicated and a touch too fragile to expose it to the chaos that is interaction. I think I may try my hand at a separate fiction (system apocalypse/rogue-lite mashup) with a heavy amount of reader interaction, but that is a task for the future.

This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

On a more whimsical note, I came across an amusing observation the other day. All the chapters so far take up ~170 kb of space on my hard drive, while the document I store the stats, do the math, and plan everything in takes a whopping 404 kb. I found that immensely amusing and a testament to the unhealthy amount of spreadsheeting I've been doing behind the scenes.

This is the time to rate and review if you haven't done so already. Also, leave a comment if you have any specific complaints, questions or directions you would like the fiction to explore.