I’ve finally begun fully testing the game from start to finish. Theoretically, the game should be fully functional and I should be able to reach the ending with no problem.

Cool.

Now let me tell you what’s actually happening. Currently, I am playing through the first year of the game. As some of you may know, I’ve already played through the first year so this part of the game should give me no problems. My main focus should be on the following years since they haven’t been tested, right?

I’m sure some of you already know what I’m about to say.

It has truly been a long time since I’ve tested the first year. I’ve made many changes to the back end of the game. Because of this, I’ve had to comb through the first year and make the same improvements to maintain consistency. While doing this, I rediscovered incomplete portions of the game that I so kindly left for myself with a nice little note.

That’s partly why it took so long for me to fully start game testing. But all of that is done now, I am now in the middle of year 1. I was hoping to complete year 1 before I made this update, but as I said, the game has a lot of differences from when I first tested it.

For one, it is feature complete. As in, everything I originally wanted to be in the game, is in the game. Because of this, I have to take my time and make sure every single moment of the game functions exactly like I expect it to. I am also testing added features for the first time, and as expected, they didn’t work correctly at first.

What has surprised me the most was old features I thought worked correctly, didn’t. The companion stat managing system and the budgeting system were both flawed. Granted, this is the first time I’m fully testing them, but correcting them took time that could have been used for game testing.

There were also cases of battles not functioning right due to changes I made later in the game, as well as a series of bad dialogue that I completely missed the first time I game tested.

Despite these set backs, I didn’t run into many game stopping bugs. So that’s good. I’m only halfway into first year and it’s already been over 5 in game hours. Oh, boy.

I would like to get through this game testing session fast, but we’ll just have to see how the later half of the game plays out.

Next week I’m going to release a video going over the music of Guardian’s Guide. Besides that, I’ll just be game testing the entire time. Fixing problems that show up along the way.

Writing the paragraph above made me think of this classic video. Man, when I step back and look at the whole game, it really is shocking that I managed to put it all together. It’s like playing one of your all time favorite games and having the power to make it even better.

I just hope people out there will enjoy it as much as I enjoyed making it. I’ll talk to you guys in the next update.

(Last second edit: Holy smokes, it’s been almost a full year since I made the year 1 test video. Since that time, I’ve manage to complete damn near the rest of the game and now I’m testing year 1 for the last time. Holy meat balls, I didn’t even realize I was grinding that hard. I am speechless.)