Wow, what an adventure. For the last 2 weeks or so I’ve been testing the battle and exploration of the first year. And let me tell you, it was quite an experience.

Admittedly, I assumed it would just take a week to test everything, but I didn’t fully realized at the time that I crossed the threshold from asset building to logic testing. I ran into A LOT of bugs. Some of the bugs were so bad I had to go back and make massive changes to items and enemies. Matter of fact I’m pretty sure I will have to make even more changes after this play through.

Nonetheless, I squashed those bugs and managed to play the entire year as I envisioned the game. You guys, at multiple points I was forgetting I was testing the game and I was just enjoying the experience. This is the point of the game development I’ve been waiting years to arrive to. And it’s just the first year, I’ve intentionally held back certain features for the first year so the playing experience will only get more exciting in the later years.

Take a look at this.

This is the total time it took me to play the first year while battling and exploring. I was attempting to emulate a curious player who opened every chest and fought most of the battles. This does not include the game’s full intro, shopping, city events, home events and other miscellaneous events relating to the daughter raising aspect of the game. To put this into more perspective, here is the time it took me just to get through all 7 years ignoring all events but the jobs.( which I rushed through)

1 year of battling and exploring versus 7 years of nothing but rushing the job events. Keep in mind, I intentionally made the maps of the first year small, also, the events of the first year will be pretty tame as well. For the following years, especially the later half, things will start to get more interesting.

If I have to guess based on the information I’ve gathered so far, I would say the final game will be somewhere in between 35 to 40 hours long. Most likely more.

The next question is where to go from here. There is still PLENTY that needs to be done. Should I go on and attempt to finish all the remaining battle and exploration? Should I focus on the first year and make that fully playable? I’m not sure….

But one thing I want to do is some serious balancing. The battle is fun but I’m worried the scaling may be wonky. I also have a small laundry list of bugs I need to take care of. You guys have no idea the amount of “wtf why is it doing that?!” that happens in game development. I’m trying to catch them all like pokemon but it’s never ending. lol

I’ll use the next week to consider my next direction. Until then, stay frosty folk!