[Beta 3.0] Legionwood 2: Rise of the Eternal's Realm, Epic length traditional J-RPG and direct sequel to Legionwood. Options

[Dark Gaia]

Update

Hey everyone, I've set up a small forum on my website specifically for discussing Legionwood 2 and my other games in a dedicated setting. If you'd like to get the updates as soon as they become available, or engage with me on a regular basis (since I'm not very active around here anymore and may take some time to get back to questions left in this thread), please feel free to drop by: http://legionwood.freeforums.org/index.php

Stay tuned for more news. Beta 4 release date coming soon!

[Seirno]

I was just wondering if there was any news on this, good to see it's still coming along. Went ahead and registered on your new forums.

[Dark Gaia]

Hi Seirno, no specific news as yet, but I'm about wrapping up the final area of the release and after a couple more weeks of polishing or so, I reckon it'll be ready for release.

[Dark Gaia]

Time for some news!

As of today, I've pretty much wrapped up development of the Beta 4.0 release of Legionwood 2, having completed all of the remaining content in Act II, and now all that remains is a couple of weeks of testing and some final polishing.

In the game's current form, all of the new content is completely playable from start to finish (and all up there's ~3 hours or so of new content to look forward to) in a basic and unbalanced manner, and most of the new events and scripts are working fine. Theoretically, I could release the beta now and players would be able to get right up to the beginning of the game's third act, but I want to spend a few weeks to a month from now thoroughly testing and polishing this new content to make sure it's all balanced and bug free upon release. I've contacted some of my old beta testers to help me with this, and they'll be receiving WIP builds of the game in the next few days.

In particular, I want to make sure that all of the morality based content in the new release is working as intended, and I'm also going to do a quick sweep of the game to rebalance the morality system in general to make sure that the game's choices and consequences aren't heavily skewed to one side over the other. The new release is intended to have equally valid reasons to play through the game with either positive or negative morality, and the game's plot reaches a huge turning point at the end of Act II with the death of one of two characters (determined by the player's morality). Ultimately, the goal is for Legionwood 2 to have multiple possible endings and for the player's choices in game to determine what the will (or won't) encounter in their current playthrough.

I've also made the decision to slightly revise the game's story into a three act structure, rather than mimicking the four chapters of Legionwood 1. Legionwood 2 will henceforth be divided up into an Act I, Act II and Act III (with the Beta 4 release containing the entirety of the first two acts). My reasoning behind this is that the game's second act, Aftermath and Alliance is already quite long and covers quite a bit of the game's backstory -- it's already at least as long as the first two chapters of the original Legionwood combined -- and what I'd planned for the last two chapters of the game is quite small in comparison, so it made more sense to combine Chapters 3 and 4 into a larger Act III which matches the scope and progression of the previous two acts. Overall, not a very significant change, but to me at least it helps make the game's story progression seem more fluid.

All of these final touches and polishes shouldn't take me longer than 2 or 3 weeks to complete. However, I am returning to university next week, and so my free time will suddenly become a little less readily available, which may impact on my progress and delay the release a little more (though I still hope to get this testing period over and done with as soon as I can). At the moment, I'd tentatively give mid to late March as a release estimate, though please don't hold me to that. I just wanted to let you all know that development is still going smoothly and that Beta 4 is all but complete sans a few final touches, and that you'll get the chance to play it soon. Stay patient!

More updates are to come closer to release. Thanks for your continued support.

[Dark Gaia]

Beta testing has begun!

As of this week, Beta 4.0 of Legionwood 2 is complete and is entering its pre-release testing period. Selected beta testers have already been contacted and sent testing builds of the game to play. I'm confident that most of the remaining bugs and balancing issues have been squashed by this point, but having a group of testers run through the game will allow me to be perfectly sure it's ready for release.

There are six beta testers who are playing the game (each with different party configurations so as to test the game's balance) who will report a log of findings and suggestions to me once they get to the end of the Beta, and then I'll implement changes as needed. I'm waiting for all of the testers to finish with the game before I begin this final polishing period, so actual release may still be a while off. I've set three weeks from now as the deadline for the testers to meet, which means the Beta should be ready by early June, though again this depends on how fast the testers complete the game and how many bugs they report.

Beta 4.0 adds the second half of Act II to the game and allows you to get 60% through the game's main plot. New content including the desert nation of Entoban and a handful of new sidequests should add about 2 or 3 hours of gameplay to the game's total. Your decisions as a player really start coming into play in Beta 4.0, and Act II will end in one of two different ways depending on your morality (and you'll be able to continue along multiple story paths through Act III in the full release of the game).

Thank you to everyone for patiently waiting for Beta 4.0's release. You'll have it very soon -- I promise.