One big change since the last update: the development blog has moved. That’s the first step in improving the game’s web site.

A recent development focus has been combat, and what King of Dragon Pass called “heroic combat” is now in the game. These are 27 situations where the normal combat flow is interrupted by an opportunity for an individual hero. (King of Dragon Pass had only 16, though one was called “Ten Path Battle” so it’s about the same.) There are also additional opportunities that may occur, which players choose instead of another combat option. (I still need to write “A Chance for Slaughter.”) So while the game still takes a fairly abstract approach to combat that favors narrative, players will get to make more choices during battle.

The Otherworld was another recent focus. We have an artist creating the illustrations, and all but one of the Otherworld travels is written and in the game. This hasn’t been a major focus of testing yet, but they do seem playable.

We continue to test as we go. The game is not complete, but it’s possible to win (thanks to liberal applications of cows from the Debug dialog, Liana has twice won the game). This has given us some feel for what the game still needs, and Robin has been adding scenes to flesh things out or adapt to certain play styles.

There are now 272 scenes coded and 224 that Liana has fully tested. We’re not done creating them, but this is almost as many in the game as were written a month ago.

It’s not technically a scene, but we’re using a script to show a page on the Lore screen that reflects your choices in the initial questionnaire. I’ve probably said it before, but we’re making a lot more use of scripts (compared to King of Dragon Pass).

While we completed the basic concept art for the game a while ago, we’ve been working on some more specifics (both individuals and Gloranthan cultures). The shared Dropbox folder of sketches and reference material is now 864 MB…

Big tasks coming up soon: starting to think about a tutorial, and music.