Hello Everyone!!
Happy Holidays, Season's Greetings, or whatever your preferred salutation is! My, oh my, the past month has been QUITE the whirlwind. As stated in the last update, my recent job change has made for a big shift in available time to work on Kedemara Ch. 4. I'd be lying if I said the past year hasn't been my most challenging yet. While weekdays are near a total loss, I still have weekends and some chunks of time off during the year. It is VERY hard to estimate progress with the way my new schedule is, but I'm very happy with where the game is sitting now in terms of development. Enough about that though, let's get onto the happy stuff!!!
Chapter 4 Progress
To put it lightly, I haven't been getting out much these past few weeks. As always, the game is a labor, but a labor of love. Though I am pleased to announce that the "hard part" is finally over! To put what that means into words...all of the planning, major scripting, and story scenes are completed for Chapter 4. I'd call this version a late Alpha or early Beta build. It is a massive relief to be at this part of development right now, but there is still a fair bit of work to do. Here's what I still need to iron out before it can be released...
- Creation of overworld enemies, setting random encounter areas, and fine-tuning Boss difficulty
- Balancing EXP yield, creating new character abilities, and balancing item stats/bonuses
- Additional "flavor" encounters and interactions with NPCs
- Finalizing dialogue and text formatting (ensuring all lore is congruent and conversations are efficient)
- Creating new items, equipment, and Achievements.
- Fine-tuning map content and timings for cutscenes
- Main-story bug testing and then 100% content bug testing (that's the tough part...)
While this sounds like a lot, most of this is very minimal impact at this point. Playtesting will thankfully not be a solo effort this time around, as I've already had a playtest with one of my Alpha testers this week. While it won't take a year, without whole days to dedicate to working on the game it may not go as quickly as I'd like (especially the playtesting). I still believe the Q1 2023 figure will be a doable goal at this point.
What to expect in Chapter 4
-Story Flow-
To be perfectly honest, I was uncertain where to end Chapter 4 a week ago. This boiled down to how the rhythm of the story "felt", and how much time I could dedicate to ensuring a quality release. The original ending point needed FAR too big of a cliffhanger, the Chapter would have been another 2-3 hours long (which would mean another 3 or 4 months to complete), and I would have squandered some VERY key opportunities for the cities/areas in question. The areas that will be explored later had excellent opportunities for character development and bringing key lore to life...I REALLY didn't want to lose that just to pad out Chapter 4.
While previous Chapters did have a "Back and Forth" flow to the story, Chapter 4 starts very mellow and the intensity begins to ramp up exponentially as you progress. The original ending point would have dropped down much too far from where it currently ends, killing the momentum it builds across the entire Chapter. After hearing what my Alpha Tester had to say, they believe the current ending is the proper one for this chapter too.
-Dialogue Style-
Like I said in the last update, we're already at nearly 30 hours of content in Chapters 1-3 alone, so there was no need to stretch Chapter 4 out longer than it needed to be. As of the last test (without random encounters and Boss battles), we're sitting at 7-8 hours of content for Chapter 4. I've made dialogue more succinct and easier to read now, and will do revisions on previous chapters as I work on Chapter 5. Some of the Streamers liked to read the content aloud, others preferred to just read key scenes aloud...I also have Streamers who translate it to their native language as they stream, so I want to be considerate of everyone I can who's playing.
There will be further refinement as I polish up Chapter 4, but so far my Alpha Tester liked the change and felt it was an improvement. Important cutscenes will have slightly more text density, but this will be highly relevant and based on what "voice" we need to impart for the speaker. One side effect of this (according to my Tester) was that you "Really need to pay attention to the dialogue, or you will miss something important." Since most folks are "in it for the story", I'm not sure how much this impacts you, but they felt it was worth mentioning to everyone.
-Combat Mechanics-
Admittedly, combat is an afterthought for me in development, but I DO want to make it as fun as possible. Nobody likes tons of random encounters, or repetitive combat that becomes draining to endure. I have a great surprise that you'll encounter roughly halfway through Chapter 4, that brings a very big shift in combat mechanics and strategy. I don't want to spoil anything, so I'll leave it at that....but it's very exciting and is congruent with the story too, I think everyone will find it quite fun!
- Tone of the Story-
There will be a definitive shift in tone as the Chapter progresses onward, but there will still be plenty of laughs and smiles to be had during this chapter. As Deirdre ages and is more cognizant of the world around her, we begin to learn the nature of her world right alongside her. Life is complicated and often there are no easy answers. Don't lose heart though, because she certainly won't! We can't always control our circumstances, but we CAN control how we move onward through them!
There were lots of new questions posed and much to ponder at the end of Chapter 3. While you may not get answers right away, by the time Chapter 4 is over, MANY things will come into focus and its relevance to their world will become quite clear. One could say the end result of Chapter 4 is "We know the task before us...now how will we proceed?"
Chapter 4 Trailer and Teasers
Being so focused on completing Chapter 4, I don't have much time to allocate to promotional media for this release (or the game in general). I will attempt to piece a short teaser trailer for Chapter 4 soon, but want to make sure my focus is on completing the Chapter first and foremost. I think it will be rather exciting, and I will eventually get a better trailer together for the entire game (but that may not be until Chapter 5 releases).
I may post some screenshots in the near future as well, as that takes minimal time and serves to build excitement too. Really looking forward to everyone's thoughts on this Chapter!!
Chapter 4 Release Estimate
Like I said prior, we're still on track for Q1 2023, but it's hard to gauge what could pop up (and inevitably does). To give an example, we had a few hiccups where the game froze at the battle victory screen. This was only occurring on AMD 6000-series GPUs, so I need to do further testing to see if this is going to be an issue with the future update. *sigh*
If I had to give a month estimate, I'd say February at the earliest and March at the latest.
I want to thank everyone for their patience and for playing the game in the first place! I believe Chapter 4 sets the final Chapter of this story in an excellent position, and can already see the ending of this particular story in sight. It is difficult to imagine the scale of a game when you first start out, but I think I've learned a great deal from this whole process....especially since it's my first game to develop. I look forward to the relationships we've built with the characters continuing to blossom, as we all hear Deirdre's story together.
This won't be "the end" though! We'll be seeing many of our old friends in Kedemara II as well!! I'll try and get through Chapter 5 before we start talking about THAT game though ;-)
Thank you all!!
- Andrew (Creator)