It's been a school-filled few months, but we have finally completed and posted the walkthrough! You can find it on the game's site. In addition, we've added a walkthrough page with not only this link, but also a few useful hints that might help you avoid needing the walkthrough. I apologize for the delay, but I hope that most of you were able to find help either from myself or from one of the people were kinda enough to give hints in my place.

As exciting as it is to finally have the walkthrough done, that's not all we've been working on. While I have been busy with school and have barely had the chance to work on two, Makio has been hard at work making resources for it. As such, she's decided to open a dev blog where she'll be posting bits and pieces as she finishes them. So if you wanna see how the sequel is coming, or you'd like to toss in your input, you can check out the dev blog here.

Thanks for your patience.

If you've been following the previous blog at all, you might have noticed that there are only two things left the to do/might do lists:

-Music and sound. The wonderful Tarranon has agreed to take our request to make a few tracks to finish the soundtrack. Once we receive those, they will be implemented.
-Bug Testing. I've tested it pretty extensively myself over the last couple months, but I've also opened it up to other people to help test as of today. I've mostly been looking for people who have not played before, to allow for a fresh perspective. If anyone here would like to test as well, let me know.

Once those two items are complete, I will be releasing the deluxe edition. We're most likely use at least part of the time before hand to make content for the website, as well as writing a walkthrough, that I plan to release a week or two after deluxe. (Since I want to give people the chance to figure it out for themselves first).

Something else I did a week or two ago is, I updated all the screenshots on this site to reflect the changes to the tileset and such that we've made. I'll be uploading a few more screenshots sometime in the near future.

But that shouldn't take very long at all. So what come's next?

Castle Chase 2

Makio is on a great cross-continent vacation right now, but once she's back in a week and a half, I would not be surprised if production of the sequel begins in earnest. Currently, we have the premise worked out (thanks to Solitayre), the major players designed and characterized, and the rough plot points plotted out. I imagine the next step will be to design the game play elements, and write out the script. I believe I have noted before, your choice from the first game will affect a few minor plot points in the sequel (like where Monica is at the beginning and what she is wearing), but the overall events will remain largely the same. So once you play the deluxe version, keep you CC_System_Data for use in the sequel.

It's been almost a month since we released the Game Gale version, and I thought I should post an update on the status of Deluxe. I haven't had as much time as I would like to work on it (pretty much just the last couple weekends), but we are making progress. We've largely finished all the initially planned content, and mostly just have to add the new "deluxe" content.

What's done:
-Mostly fixed up all reported bugs and errors. If we missed anything, it'll get caught when we do the extensive bug test at the end.
-Plotted out the addition of two more endings.
-Added one of the said two endings into the game.
-Made the hint babes a little more detailed and accurate. Also: personalities to match the faces!
-Added the NPCs who were left out, as well as had NPCs who moved actually move to their new locations.
-All NPCs now respond to every item, whether it is a specific response or a general "I have no interest in that item" type.
-broke the Hyde ending...AGAIN
-Played with the collectable items a bit to make them stand out more

-Tried a couple ideas for making the hallways shorter, but they both ended up feeling too weird when playing. Since the complete castle makeover that would be required to fix this would break a LOT of events, increased the walk speed a smidge instead.
-The game now saves "System" data for use in telling what endings you have achieved, as well as setting a "canon" ending for the sequel. I still need to test the sequel ability out, but I'm pretty confident it will work as I have planned.
-Tied into the above, added a bonus menu to the title screen that currently just shows which endings you have unlocked.


That was actually longer then I expected. Hopefully the following list is shorter...

What needs to be done
-Map the two new additional rooms of the castle
-Event everything related to the second of the endings mentioned before.
-Ending pictures for the new endings.
-Add variations to the existing endings. For example, what happens if you wait until a certain snitch is out of the way to get one particular ending? Things like that, as well as making multiple ways to get a couple items. An example that's already been partially implemented: getting the golden saucer not through an event.
-Music and sound. Oh, the oh so ignored music and sound. I have to admit this scares me the most. I wasn't having a ton of luck when I went looking initially during the contest, outside of the one song I found and used, and I really hope I can have some better luck this time.
-Bug testing bug testing bug testing. I don't like releasing buggy product dang it.

Not that long a list, but a lot of those steps are going to be long and tedious ones. Particularly since 2 and 4 are likely to produce more bugs to hunt.

The final list is one of things that we've somewhat discussed, but we haven't finalised whether they are worth doing or not.

Things we might do
-A trailer for Castle Chase 2: Ham Kingdom's Ploy (working title) unlocked by completing the bonus menu? The issue with this is it would delay deluxe until which time that 2 is far enough long to make a trailer.
-Debating adding more to the bonus menu, but am not sure what. Character profiles maybe?
-Make the "canon" ending set-able in the bonus menu? Currently the canon ending is the last ending you saw in game, which allows for a bit more detailed information, such as which ending variation you obtained.
-Redrawing all the existing ending pictures. They were done with the deadline in mind, and aren't as high quality as say, the title screen. There's always the possibility of frustration trying to make an image better though.
-Examining of other items besides those you can pick up. All the dialogue is written for this, but I can't decide if it will annoy the player or not.
-The ability to use certain items anywhere. This is mostly coded in already (it's how the save system works), but it seems fairly useless. But it might be fun to say, be able to shake the noisemaker anywhere and make a noise.
-Sprite variations? Things like holding up a lantern. Possibly tied into the above.
-A mini caterpillar system? For when you have a boy with you, to show that they are with you instead of having them disappear into hammer space. It might be helpful for the player to know someone is with you (in case they forgot?) but it seems far from essential.
-Fancy up the save screen. Something else very cosmetic that was discussed from the very beginning but was always too cosmetic to worry about for a deadline. This would increase the number of save files, and just have the screen fit in more with the style of the game, versus good old default.

If you have any comments, particularly on the last list, I'd love to see them. Otherwise this shall remain as something more useful to us, the developers, to organize what is left to be done.