Weekly Update (9-15-2025)

I made some pretty good progress on mapping this week.

Making castles has always been one of my favorite parts of making the game. They're a bit hard to show fully on one screen, which is sad in terms of showing them off, but I can at least offer a preview that I like to think captures a bit of the coolness of one:

Obviously, Alexander being there is just me debug teleporting. XD

Actually only one of two new castles I was working on here, though, so I'll let the other one remain a mystery. =P

Overall, there isn't too much mapping to do this update, but I do have some other side work that I need to do before I shift fully into writing mode. Exactly what that is is also a secret, but I'm liking how it's looking from the start I got on it. >.>; <.<; Hopefully it won't take me too terribly long, since it's something I've been thinking about for a long time in itself, it's just finally time to actualize.

I also hope to finally introduce that "loyalty past 100" system this update, which I've been thinking about for a while. I'll probably wait until the combat design phase of the update at the end to fully work on that, though. Part of my issue was deciding how to weave it in narratively, and I think I have a solution for that now. I do still need to decide on the specifics of the buffs, and that may take some tuning, so feel free to share thoughts on that once it's out.

In other news, I haven't looked around too much to see, but I'm wondering if the publicist's work has gotten at least some small content creator(s) interested, because there's been an interesting dynamic where, while views are down like they usually would be at this point in the cycle, actual downloads on both itch and steam are up:

Itch numbers. Top graph is views, bottom is downloads.

Steam. Top image is views, bottom is downloads. Daily active users has also been at a higher sustained level than usual.

Anyway, sorry for the data spam. XD I do find these things interesting, but I'm sure not everyone does.

In other other news, I did get to about 45k words on my side writing. That will be going more on the backburner as soon as I finish this chapter I'm on, but I'll try to find some time this week or early next to edit the first 10 chapters and post them as a preview. It does kind of amuse me that I beat that national novel writing month wordcount in a week + a weekend. XD Obviously I can write a bit faster on pure writing than I can game writing, but my speed on the latter is far from bad in itself. So, I admit, I really hope this works out and I can turn my full focus to my creative endeavors sometime in the near future--it would give me a lot more time to work on the game too.

Also, Mimo ran into some snags on art stuff. I'm hoping she can resolve it quickly, but I just wanted to note since I had been hoping to update the Lorena art preview with something closer to a final soon based on the last WIP she sent me, but that may be a bit further off now. Either way, I don't think it will be too big a problem, just a frustrating setback (mostly for her, honestly) that I hope she can get resolved quickly. She really has the worst luck. X_x;

Anyway, for now back to mapping and secrets! As ever, thanks to everyone for their support. ^^