We're getting there... slowly yet surely!

Content wise the game is finished now, so in other words, if you play the game now you should be able to play through all the content up to the final boss of the game, and defeat that boss and watch the end of the story. All sidequests and optional bosses are also fully active, and even the extra sidequests added to the game that you can only unlock in the New Game+ are present. Game Jolt users may even be able to unlock five more extra dungeons. The reason this doesn't work for itch users (unless they have a Game Jolt account as well), as because itch does (as far as I know) not have an "achievement system", as that content unlocks on the number of achievements you have obtained in ANY game of mine. 

I am now in the final (and most hated) stage of the game's development. Polishing the game up with a few cosmetic enhancements, and making sure that all bugs that may still be in there are fixed. Of course, the "true" bugfixing only begins once the game meets you, the player. 

As said before, this game is a remake of a game I made before, and the original can also be found here on itch.io. 

1.  The story of the game has remained the same. Most of the scenarios have been copied exactly into the new game, although some discovered typos have been fixed, but I'm sure there are still a lot more. Interested in digging through all those files to make sure they are all fixed? It's quite a lot of work, I warn ya!
2. Some dungeons have been copied into the new game with only a few adaptions, others have been completely redesigned from scratch. The original game used the TeddyBear map engine which was a tile based map system. The new version uses Kthura, which is an object based system, and in some dungeons I really tried to exploit the advantages an object based map engine provides, which I could not do in the original game.
3. The user interface has been completely replaced, and the game is now using an interface similar to my Star Story, and Fairy Tale REVAMPED games. This user interface was one of the main reasons to choose for a completely rehaul rather than keeping the game the way it was.
4. Most of the assets are the same. Not only to save me work, but also to preserve the original characteristics of the game on that point. 
5. The combat system has been replaced entirely. It still uses the time based engine the original game used, but the time is now calculated through an entirely new algorithm which should be balanced more than the original. 
6. Some old spells/abilities have been removed, and some new one have been put in. 
7. I removed the "smooth scrolling" system the original game had. Although I think the system was quite nice, I've received tons of hatemail about it, even though you could turn it off in the configuration menu. It was quite horrible to get yelled at for a cool effect you spent so much time on, so I didn't wanna do that again. Sorry.
8. Unlike the old game, the new game is entirely mouse controlled
9. You can no longer change the characters names. I've taken this step in order to make voice acting possible in future versions (current version does not have it. It's hard to get voice actors in the first place and the COVID19 crisis made it even harder).
10. Rebecca's non-combat ability "haggle" has been removed and been replaced with the "scare" ability which you can use to turn off random encounters (although that ability has a few requirements).
11. Not put in the original game due to scheduling issues, but Aziëlla is now able to shoot when not in combat in order to hit far away targets.
12. All characters now have actual "attacking" animations, as in the original game I cheated a bit around also due to scheduling issues. I always hated that solution so I vowed to never do that again.
13. Please note savegames are NOT compatible with the two games. The two games are simply differ too much for that. Not only content wise, also technical wise, as a completely new engine was developed for this game. 
14. I removed the item icons and ability icons. This for cosmetic reasons, but also for technical reasons. They were always a mess. The only reason I still used them in Star Story was due to the different approach in which that game was written. There are more cosmetic changes, which is only natural due to the entirely new UI, but also some choices I deliberately made otherwise than in the original.

And this way I hope the story of Eric, Irravonia, Brendor, Seelah Gandra, Rebecca, Dernor, Merya and Aziëlla can be preserved for the future in a better getup. 

I hate to set up an ETA, but it looks like it won't be this year any more... Well, dumb thing to say when the year will only last one more day (in my timezone it was past 8pm on Dec 30th when I wrote this).

I hope you can forgive me for not writing too much here, since Game Jolt was up to now my primary site and keeping two sites up-to-date with the same information was a bit mad. This particular article was written exclusively for itch.io, though.

I hope I can release the first public beta in January or February. This all depends on the question if no more unexpected setbacks get in my way. See you and all the best for 2021!

Jeroen