Time for a long-overdue update, and this one is massive!  ^_^

I've been working hard all summer on preparing the game for alpha, and progress is great despite a few setbacks involving a recent move to a new city and a family emergency that's thankfully done for the moment. I've added a ton of new features and functionality to the game, spent a lot of time working on internal systems that will support planned improvements, and done a lot of cosmetic work on the game since May, and I'm still hoping to be ready for Alpha testing later this year.

New Game Features

Here's a brief summary of what's been added since my last update (and see examples of each in the attached screenshots):

• The Equipment System is coded into the game now, so characters will each have two basic items with special names and stats that players can upgrade (in addition to 2-4 equippable items which I will be adding later in development). You can see an example in the character editor screenshot!
• The Dialog/Cutscene System is now in the game so that I can add story elements into the game where characters will alternate speaking, and it also supports dialog choices with branching paths and outcomes! I'm very excited to use this to tell stories and offer interesting player choices along the way.
• Game Mode Selection via cards with beautiful fantasy art designs has been added, which makes navigation to the game mode or area of your choice easy and aesthetically pleasing.
• Level Selection along a path is in now, with individual levels having space to show both the enemies you'll be fighting and possible loot from the foes.
• The Pre-Combat Party Selection screen is finished, which allows you to select from your available heroes to make different teams for different combat scenarios and choose which of your heroes you'll be bringing into a particular battle. Coming soon is the ability to save and name different loadouts of heroes for different situations.
• Enemy Waves are now supported in combat, so I can queue up more than one set of enemies per battle and drop them automatically when the right conditions are met (usually killing the previous wave of enemies).
• Combat Visual Updates have been done, with the hero whose turn it is and the enemy target displayed as faceplates which show their power and the enemy waves and combat timer displayed on screen in a nicer manner. This is a small update and I'm planning a much bigger graphical overhaul with lots more to come soon for the combat screen (it hasn't been a focus this summer).

Development Features

I've also made some exciting progress on development features which players won't see directly, but which will enable a ton of functionality for me and make my life easier and development faster down the line.

• The Character Editor, a HUGE internal tool I made to speed up the design and updates to in-game characters, is 95% finished with the only parts remaining being for systems I haven't finished designing yet (namely passive abilities and equippable character gear with special stats). I'm especially psyched about this because it's going to make balancing and adding new enemies and heroes to the game breezy for me and makes future updates simple. This will also be extensible to speed up the design of other types of components like cut scenes and game levels eventually (if I decide that's useful).
  
• The Trigger System for combat has been finished, which queues triggers for all kinds of different combat events. This backbone of functionality will allow me to finally code passive abilities into the game which trigger depending on what happens in combat and also set up timed combat events and item events for equipping special items.
• I've added an entirely custom Click Controller system which handles layering dynamically and properly understands which element is being clicked on and what it should do, including supporting all of my different dragging functions on different screen areas.
• Because game maker studio does not support basic UI elements by default, I created a whole library of Custom Components for menus (dropdowns, checkboxes, search inputs, etc) and game objects (sprites, cards, faceplates) which can be invoked by a single function and re-positioned in-game with an X,Y coordinate viewer in debug mode. This allows me to very quickly prototype and lay out menu and design elements for new screens and game modes--this has already massively sped up my development and is paying dividends in terms of new feature speed.

What's Next?

I am SO CLOSE to being ready for alpha I can taste it, and I'm really excited to get some live player feedback on the core gameplay. There are just a few systems left I have to work on before I'm ready, but with how fast development lately has been and how much I'm working on this each week I'm hoping to be ready for alpha before EoY 2021.

I really just need to finish up passives, add item drops, and give players a way to level up their heroes and abilities from in-game along with a host of small tweaks I'll want to make before a release candidate, but none of these are massive or as daunting as they seemed in May with the dev updates I did over the summer.

Want to be an Alpha Tester?

I'm going to need players on PC and android willing to try out the alpha and actively provide feedback, and I'd love your help with this! If you're willing to give it some testing and write up a summary of any bugs you find and your thoughts about gameplay, I'd love to have you in the Alpha. I'll be selecting a small initial set and then slowly rolling out to more players with additional updates.

If you'd like to volunteer to help, you can register your email address below and I'll reach out when I'm ready! Thanks for reading and I'm looking forward to posting more soon.

Register for Alpha Here

Also, in closing, just a quick reminder that if you'd like to support the development of this project in a passive way,  please consider supporting it on Patreon!

Thanks friends. WAGMI. ^_^