Lots of personal craziness went on throughout the last month, but I figured everything out and I'm back on track.
A ton of bugs have been fixed and performance optimizations were implemented. There are currently 5 major things that need to happen before the end of this year in order to stay on track for a 2025 spring release date:
- Further QA for the 9 center segments
- The Knights boss encounter
- Paundraka boss encounter (Yama's buffalo)
- The monastery and pathways for Chapter 01
- Optional cutscenes that give lore background and cues for the player
On top of that I'll also need to set up a publishing company and prepare the legal background for a release of chapter 01. If this is complete, then I can release chapter 02 way more quickly, because a lot less elements are needed to continue the story and the foundation is already set. For chapter 02 only Yama's scribe and the Bishop boss fight would need to be added.
Right now I'm working on the design of Ox-head and Horseface, the guards of the underworld aka "The Knights". The music for both Paundraka and the Knight's gate is complete and all I need to do now is to design the locations, areas and the overall succession of boss fight events that the player needs to deal with.
So this month the goal is completion of the first encounter with the Knights. This will be the player's access point to Lakini's Woods and Yama's palace.
