January 31 Update (Patreon)

Okay, had a much better week this time. This is part of why I felt I could commit to monthly updates: that's long enough that the bad periods will be balanced by the good ones. Not usually this good, though, otherwise I probably would have been a week or two late with an update this large. As things stand, I've been highly productive. Four more areas are basically completed. The interesting thing is that three of those areas combined took up less time than the last. One of the plot events involves your party getting split up and being temporarily controlled between battles - and the fact that this is taking place in an area you've already explored multiplies the number of possible bugs. It probably doesn't look as tricky as it was to pull off, but I think it will still add some fun variety. Weirdly, the biggest thing I haven't done is the enemies for every single area - all the monsters are just carrying a placeholder encounter. I've been putting this off since it made sense to do this all at once. A fair bit of next week will be keeping things balanced - though since you can do this area in multiple orders, I hope everyone will be able to find the difficulty they want. Just making enemies takes a little longer than you might think, though. I think of a general challenge/theme for each segment - for example, one area is better for physical fighters, another involves enemies that heal themselves, etc. That requires making new skills, figuring out balanced stats, etc. I try to make each enemy one cog in the segment's challenge, or at least possess a trait that differentiates it (other than the graphic). The game will probably be out next weekend, but I can't say that for sure. I won't rush it out untested, but I wouldn't necessarily delay another week, either. We'll see how next week goes.