Lemme start by being real with you all: 2018 was a roller coaster for me in terms of life. Just to name a few milestones, I:

- Graduated university after an eight year off and on struggle. Finances, bureaucracy, and a few other reasons stretched it out for as long as it did.

- Was fired from my minimum wage job because of a mental disability. No joke. The reason given was that I was, and I quote: "Too slow in the head, and need to find a place that's more suitable for my needs."

- Attempted and failed to meet PotF's release goal of Summer.

- Attempted and failed to meet PotF's (non-committed) release goal of Winter.

- Began a new career as an IT consultant specifically because of my game development background. NOT my degree, by the way. The games made in RM drew as much, if not more, attention on my resume than anything academic related! And people say RPG Maker will get you nowhere. Ha!

- Began to claw my way out of a 2 year tenancy in a really, really bad mental state. I'm not out of it yet, but every day gets marginally better.


...among other things. Yet not a single event caused me to stop working on the game. Honestly, PotF has been one of the few solid rocks to keep me from getting swept away in the river of depression, so I'm REALLY glad I didn't give it up. With the new year finally arriving, I feel comfortable finally putting a bow on everything that went on last year and ship it all into a furnace to burn for eternity.


And I'm certain I'm not the only one who feels that way, Twitter.






So. 2019, PotF's 4 year development anniversary, and why should you bother?

I'm grateful that I actually have a full time job that doesn't stress me out to the brink of misery, but it does mean that I'm far more busy now than I ever have been. Ever since this new job, I've only been able to do any substantial work on PotF on the weekends. As I get more and more used to it, I can work on the game a little more during the week. Regardless of how much work gets done, though, it won't be as fast as it has been in the past.

On the bright side, I don't have much more content to actually CREATE now. I said I would work on the remaining endings last month, and I've mostly done that. The dialogue is written and edited for the second ending route. Once that's added to the game, all that's left is the third ending route, and it's all polishing from there.



So, essentially, there are only a few things left before PotF can finally move into beta:

- Implement cutscenes for ending 2

- Write and edit dialogue for ending 3

- Implement cutscenes for ending 3.


And the core game will be complete. That's something I feel I can comfortably do without being stressed out. PotF WILL be completed in 2019, and I'll have a more solid release time once I start getting some reliable feedback from testers. Speaking of which...

Once I've gotten the endings completed, I'd like to start sending increments of the game out to testers. This is not a small game, by any means, and so I'd like to take time polishing and testing chunks of it so testers aren't overwhelmed by the size of the game. Plus, early feedback can help me spot and fix issues in the future. I'll elaborate more on that next month, but I keep a running list of interested people!


Thanks so much for reading! This was a bit of a bulky update, but here's to a better 2019!