Hey, it's been a while. But I have been doing stuff!

First off, the good news. The game is, in a technical sense, very near completion. Almost all dialogue written, almost all music written, almost all bugs squashed, almost all graphics made, etc. I'd say the game is about 90-93% complete. It's been a long time, and it feels nice to be this far along. The game is fully playable from beginning to end, and everything should be smooth from here on out, right?

Well, I don't want to get your hopes up too soon, because I don't know how much longer it's going to take. It might be a bit longer than I'd like, unfortunately.

I'm sure everyone reading this is fully aware that, in the USA, the past year has been, uh, very not good. My living situation is extremely fortunate, but even then the past year has been so immensely distressing that I've developed quite intrusive stomach pain. There's rarely a moment in the day when my stomach isn't giving me at least some grief, and it's made working on anything at all very difficult. I don't want to dwell on this very much, because I'm certain everyone who cares enough to read my posts is just as nervous as I am about the near future. So, long story short, progress lately has been slow. I've been doing my best to keep up pace, but the amount of stress I've been going through has caused development of Dungeon Gals to become increasingly taxing. 

This is compounded by the fact that, in all honesty, I am almost completely burned out. I'm biting the bullet and asking friends for help more often, and special thanks has to go to Mog, my fantastic co-programmer, for putting up with so much of my bullshit lately. I can barely look at a code editor anymore without developing an intense headache, and they've really been pitching in where I've been struggling.

It's not all bad, though. The help that friends have been giving me has helped progress pick back up, and after a few small (and time sensitive) things I'm working on outside of Dungeon Gals, I should be able to get back to it with the pedal to the floor. Admittedly this outlook is probably a bit enthusiastic, but if everything goes according to plan I should be able to at least have Dungeon Gals be finished by September this year. That doesn't mean it will be released by then, but most of the work should be out of my hands at that point.

I've been focusing most of my efforts on writing and proofreading, as well as replacing things like fake walls and hidden passages with more interesting puzzles. I've been taking a page from La-Mulana's book and making some more esoteric challenges that reward the player with optional stuff, but the main game itself is going to be more straightforward. I've also been adding things like death traps and such, in order to give the game's design a little more danger. If the player knows everything is going to be safe and predictable, then there wouldn't be that much excitement, would there? 

I've also been trying to add in little character details anywhere I can. It's been tricky, because I'm really running up against the limitations of the framework I set up 5 years ago. But I believe I have done a great job of fitting in as much of what I want in as I can, and I think the end truly is in sight. So hopefully development shouldn't take much longer, and I can finally get this game out the door for everyone to enjoy! 🙏

Thank you for reading!