"Happy Days Are Here Again"
Also: Lionheart Devblog #01.

I bring the exciting news that the incredible Happy (nee Rei-) of Ascendance and Ill Will fame has been brought on to help with this project. First off, he will be taking over with the mapping after a certain point. The next ten or twelve maps in the project I'll be making myself, but after that it will be all him. After all the maps are done, he will be sticking around to help with the game's general prettiness and further down the line, even composing some custom music! Obviously, this is awesome news.

As you can see if you are looking at this game page--and I hope you are--I've gotten some much appreciated feedback from Kel and pianotm as well as a Let's Play from kory_toombs. And I'm waiting on some more feedback I've requested from some other voices in the RM scene. I don't know yet if I've won any of the "prizes" from the Revive The Dead competition--it's too soon for judges' feedback to be in--but I'm not holding my breath. This was a pretty rough build.

Besides that, I have been slowly plodding forward since the rushed Halloween Demo Release. I've created very little "new content" in the last few days (honestly, just one map, and I'm eh about it), and largely have been focused on fixing every little thing that annoyed me in the demo content with its niggling imperfection. Here's a laundry list of stuff that's been resolved or is currently being worked on to end the post:

• Added a dark background to the text that appears over the 'Map of Chimer' during the optional intro and the "two years in two minutes" scene, greatly enhancing readability.
  
• Corrected a few pesky passability issues. Some of these were things that I fixed for the demo-release and had to go back and 're-fix' in the full project.
  
• Added orthogonal and diagonal running animations for the main character, Garinol, and enabled dashing on the most field maps (except the really small ones) starting as soon as you leave the tent. A message pop up when you head into the first mountains (around the time you see the first save point) reminds players you can hold Shift to Run, useful for players not familiar with RMVX (Ace).
  
• Added Combat Manuals for Garinol, Lila, and Lucan as soon as you gain control of them in the command tent at Fellfrost Landing. The manuals are Key Items that can be read from the item menu as often as you like, and briefly summarize each character's "fighting style". This should make the early game much less overwhelming for new players. It also helped me pin down some of the mechanics by explaining them textually in full sentences.
  
• Some little stuff so little even I can't remember it. Like the icon I was using for the 'Numb' state said 'Sluggish' so I edited it in paint.net to say 'Numb' instead, removed some unwanted pixels from Garinol's running animation as I implemented it, crap like that. Stuff that is almost unnoticeable in gameplay but can chew up hours fixing. gammak is a cruel mistress.
  
• Added prices to all of the items and equipment that exist in the game so far, in preparation for having actual shops and meaningful currency drops at some future point.
  
• Currently, I'm struggling with re-implementing Cooldowns into the game. Hopefully, in the future, Smite Evil, Guard Break, Sword Break, Mind Break, Mana Break, and Speed Break will all use Cooldowns rather than limited uses per battle, and many enemy skills will use Cooldowns as well (starting with the Ice Atronach boss).
  
• Finally I'm hoping to get the 'Equip Scene' modified so that the player can see the effects that different equipment will have on their EVA (Parry), HIT, and CRIT rates as well as the other stats, so they'll be able to make informed decisions about what gear to use.

Some time in the reasonably near future I should get a game page up for Grand Grimoire, Lionheart's sister project, set in the same world and using the same graphics and mechanics.