Progress Report

Greetings, everyone!

This was the week when the final version of Long Live the Princess started to come together into a coherent whole. Let's have a look.

Long Live the Princess

I spent most of the past week working on the brand-new achievement system you will see in version 1.0. At the time of writing, there are 62 achievements for you to find, and each and every one has been fully implemented in the game. Achievement hunters among you will be kept busy for a while trying to hunt down all of these. I even got rid of some achievements after implementing them, either because they were so obscure that they wouldn't be fun to achieve or because they were practically doubling another achievement by accident. 

With the achievements out of the way, I could start my full playthrough of the game. I believe this might be the first time since 2017 or so that I actually play the entire game at a leisurely pace, reading every sentence in detail. I want to get the full player experience like you do, to see the game from your point of view. This allows me to make better judgment calls about adjusting the progression and balance. I have already made changes that should make the game experience smoother and less annoying than it used to be. Among other things, it's now easier to meet the Fairy Queen, there are more opportunities to talk to Thaddeus, and Ahab drinks on Tuesdays in addition to Fridays and Saturdays. I'm also fixing up all the wonky transitions I find, especially in the early game, and adding music to gameplay sections that used to be too quiet.

All in all, this is the last big polish pass this game will get. As part of my playtesting, I intend to play the entire story as well as a couple of alternate paths (toward bad endings, mainly), and I will obtain every achievement without cheating to ensure that they are all achievable. 

As this is a big game, I expect this playtesting to take some time. On the other hand, the fact that I'm even playtesting shows how far development has come. The final update is basically feature complete except for the optional time limit, which I will add last. At this point, I estimate that version 1.0 should be out at some point during November.

Supermodel

This week, I returned to working on the music for this game. After last week's writing, I felt inspired to add music to my prose, and I made good progress on that front. Nothing is finished yet, but the development is promising. 

Apart from that, the focus was mainly on LLtP.

And that's it for yet another week. The finish line is getting ever closer, and I can't wait to cross it.

Until next time!