A New Plan
I don’t usually (maybe never) talk about my personal life on this blog, but, there have been some major life changes for me (nothing bad!) Without going into detail, all I can say is my living situation and schedule is quite a bit different. BUT, I am happy to say, I still have the time commitment to release Kovari Legends’ chapters every 2-3 months! I started this adventure knowing over the course of creating such a large and expansive JRPG as a solo game developer, my life and living situation would likely change and/or evolve. But, I made a commitment to myself to release the entire game, every chapter. Even if the final chapter doesn’t get released until 2030, it WILL get released 🙂
The “First” Chapter
The “first” chapter has always been the Prologue, which consists of 3 separate flashbacks. Each flashback is with a different playable character, and allows the player to experience different power levels. (So original, I know.) The Prologue “story” itself also contains a great opening scene (the actual main playable character of the game is introduced), a great introduction to many of the main characters, and a pretty awesome cutscene 😉 So now the plan is to just release this ENTIRE prologue as ONE chapter, instead of breaking it up into 3 separate releases. The bad news is it won’t be released for about 6 months (as if anyone is currently reading this with great anticipation.) The good news is it will be $2.99 like all the other chapters, instead of $1.99 each (a $2.98 savings; hurry, act now!) The great news is it will be an awesome “first” (paid) release on Steam to really show off so many aspects of the game, and (hopefully) get players excited for what’s to come 🙂
Next Steps
Now that I have a working demo released (Steam, itch.io, this blog), I have a lot of updates to make to the “engine” that I learned while making this demo. I also have gotten some great feedback to incorporate! Although the engine is “100%” complete (more like 97%), it still needs to be thoroughly tested, refactored, and polished (things like the Book Reading mechanics, Settings/Options menus, defensive battle Abilities, Enemy AI, battle Action FX, battle SFX, and a few more.) These items will likely take 2-3 months to FINALIZE, and then, finally, I can just create new chapters as I go! (Yes, there are some code/mechanic things that will be created “at each chapter”, like a new tool mechanic, or puzzle variation, but once the “system” is in place, adding this new bit of code will be very easy, and a lot of fun!)
Sunday Update
Monday Update will now become Sunday Update. My next few posts will be more spaced out, mostly updating my progress on FINALIZING the “engine”. Stay tuned 🙂
-Mike