This major update represents a milestone in the development of Guardian’s Guide. I cover most of everything in the video below, so I will use this blog post as a transcript of the video.

Hey. It’s been a long time since I’ve made a video about the progress of Guardian’s Guide. That’s because I’ve been working hard behinds the scenes to reach a certain milestone before I created a new video. I am proud to say, I’ve finally reached that milestone.

If you aren’t aware, I am currently in the process of creating a game titled Guardian’s Guide. It’s a daughter raising sim and RPG all in one. The game was inspired by the Princess Maker series and my goal is to have it released on steam later this year. You can actually wishlist the game right now if you like. These videos are a document of my progress and a means to keep viewers up to date about the status of this game.

(This map takes place at the start of year 2. It’s just a basic quest.)

So for the past couple of months I’ve been working to complete the battle and exploration portion of the game. This part of the game is by far the largest portion and required the most work. Thankfully, I already had everything written down, so all I had to do was put into the game.

Well, the process was easier said than done. I practically had to redesign a lot of my approaches so it would be easier to reuse objects and make sweeping changes without breaking the game.

(This map takes place in the middle of year 2. Another basic quest.)

Over time, I dramatically increased my speed of adding maps to the game. What originally took me a full day, now takes me just a few hours. I ended up making many changes to the documents so my ideas were more streamlined. I also made improvements to the documents or simply removed ideas that didn’t make sense to the overall game flow.

(This map takes place in the middle of year 3. It’s the start of more story focus development.)

Out of everything I’ve done, the most time consuming part of this whole process was the story focus events. Each of these events either involved branching dialogue, multi scene changing dialogue, active battle dialogue, or all of the above. For most of these events, I had to sit there and come up with methods on how to get around systems without breaking them, or I had to implement countless lines of dialogue, while make corrections along the way.

If you multiple all that by 30 to 40 times, you will start to get an idea of what I had to deal with. Regardless, I worked my butt off. And now, it’s all finally done.

(This map takes place towards the end of Year 5. This is a story focus map. I intentionally hid quest related dialogue.)

I’ve taken a rough count of the number of maps I’ve created, and I believe there are over 60 in this entire game. I’m not going to add anymore than this, 60 is more than enough. As for the battles, I still have work to do in that department. The work is mostly related to balance testing. I kinda guesstimated with the stats in the later half of the game. I won’t know how good or bad the battles are until I properly test everything.

So, with everything I’ve completed so far, you might be wondering what I have left to be done. Well, it’s mostly holiday events and additional dialogue spread throughout the game. I also have the end game and post game events I need to complete.

(This map takes place at the beginning of year 6. It’s a basic quest related map but eventually lead to story development.)

Finally, I need to test everything. This process is going to be a huge pain. I still remember all the bugs I ran into back with I played through the first year of the game. Now I’m to going to have to do that 6 more times, plus the post game content. Yay……..

As for the release date, it’s still too soon to say. The good news is, the game is 100% on track to be released this year. As of making this video, I’d say the game is about 75% complete. My next goal is to reach 80% completion. At that point, all of the content I originally planned should be set into the game, making it playable from start to finish.

When I say playable, I mean the game won’t crash or suddenly stop progressing due to some over site on my end. I should also mention, being playable doesn’t account for small bugs and terrible gameplay balance. My immediate goal is to simply have the game complete in a bare bone state.

(This image wasn’t in the video but it was in the footage I recorded. It simply didn’t make the cut for the final edit.)

As for the remaining 20%, that will mostly be me testing the game, adjusting gameplay balance, and adding any additional content I feel is necessary. This last bit of game development doesn’t sound like a lot, but I could end up spending way too much time here. Truthfully, I’m really worried I might waste too much time adding unnecessary content. There are many ideas I still want to add to the game but I don’t have a lot of time left to dedicate to additional content.

I guess I’ll just have to see how the schedule looks like once I reach that point.

I’m extremely excited to be this close to the completion of this project. I hope you stick around to the very end. Until the next update, stay well guys.