I’ve finally done it. I’ve finally reached the end of the story portion of the game. I’m currently sitting at 112 hours from start to finish. I don’t think this time frame is a true reflection of what the player can expect since I spent a great deal of time checking every battle, event, treasure and object, but this amount of time is way more than I expected it to be.

My biggest concern with all the testing I’ve done is game stopping bugs and object/events/battles not working as they should. I BELIEVE I corrected all of them. But just to be sure, I’ll be going through and reviewing all of the scripts again to make sure no game stopping bugs are present.

Below, you can see the full map of all the major locations you will explore throughout the course of the game. I became really excited once I reached this point in the game. This was my first time seeing every location visible all at once. (In the game of course)

The final story boss battle was actually pretty hard. I died the first time I fought it, but managed to win the second time around. Truthfully, the final year of the game is pretty tough overall. I died multiple times at multiple bosses. Regardless, I hope people will enjoy the challenges and character customization I implemented in the game.

I might have reach the end of the story, but it’s not the end of the game. I still need to test the post game content. Hopefully, I can get that done in the next week. I wish to finish the testing completely so I can focus on completing the game for release.

December is going to be a busy month, I have a laundry list of things to do and it has to be done before the end of the year. With the entire month at my disposal, I should be able to complete everything with time to spare.

First and foremost, I plan to upload a copy of the game to steam so they can test and verify that Guardian’s Guide, is in fact, an actual game. I also plan to begin private testing. This should happen some time in the next week.

After that, I will hyper focus on finishing all the post-game testing. I need to get this out of the way since I have a few high priority features I need to add to the game asap.

Once that’s all done, it’s times to finish the remaining 20% of the game. Fixing bugs, correcting dialogue, making balance changes and completing the remaining parts of the game so it looks presentable for release.

Hopefully, by this point, I will either have plenty of time left or just a bit of time left to add additional content before release. If not, I won’t worry about it. Once I know the release is solid and the game sells well enough, I’ll just add it in afterward.

Since the game is currently about 75%-80% done, once I upload the first version to steam, even if something were to happen to me between now and then, you will still be able to enjoy the full (story) game. (with dialogue issues here and there) As I see it, it’ll be better than nothing. (But that’s a big IF! I’m not leaving before this game is done!!!)

It won’t be much longer now folks! I’m still debating on the exact date of release. I should probably just stop procrastinating and announce it next week, but I just don’t like making promises I might not be able to keep for whatever reason. But this is the nature of game development. People are used to having dates and setting their life around that date being met.

Okay, I’ll go a head and announce the date next week. So be it. I’ll work hard to deliver a solid release.