First off, thanks for the supportive response to my last update about the release date set back. It’s good to have understanding backers behind the project.

Currently I’m still working on the overworld. It’s changed a little since- to prevent too much backtracking I’m going to avoid making items found one side of the map be used on the other side (as a general rule). At least for the main quest.

Instead I’ll do it so you’re ‘locked’ to a certain new area until the next game ‘checkpoint’. Example: You start out in Redwood Forest with your objective to get inside the castle to speak to the King. So your first say 15/20 minutes (or so) will be spent around just the forest area- solving a few puzzles, interacting with the locals, etc- until you ‘unlock’ a way past the castle guards and inside.

Then you speak to the King and he tells you to seek out the aid of a friendly wizard who lives the other direction across the river. Of course the ferry crossing is out of action so there’s a few puzzles/errands you’ll be running around the castle area to proceed.

Hopefully this’ll take out some of the frustration of running back and forth too far throughout the game map testing items all over the place.

I’m also trying to give each little area/section a bit of a scenario or event which the puzzles evolve around. Instead of just “get x item, give x item to person, get unrelated y item” in the common fetch quest tropes, I want some kind of logic to what you’re doing. It doesn’t stray too far from the Dizzy formula but in my opinion improves on it a little.

I come bearing good and bad news for you in this update. So lets start off with the good…

The Fire Temple is done. It’s Mayan flavoured. I’ve got the build up and the testers will be able to get it over at the forums and tear it to bits. So aside from tweaking and bugfixing, all the main temples are done and dusted. Phew. Brewing up all them puzzles was quite the graft..

So what’s left to do? Well the overworld is just about all there in structure, but it’s broken and needs tying together with story/events/npcs/dialogue. And I still have loads of music to crack on with.

Which brings me onto the bad news..

I’m sorry to say but the game won’t be finished this month as originally estimated. When I launched the Kickstarter page and set the ETA as March I assumed i’d be blazing ahead on the game during that month of the campaign. I soon found out that just wasn’t possible at all- my entire time during November was spent trying to push the project and get funded.

I hate to be a let down. Although I have worked on the game every day, creativity comes in bursts- sometimes it’s slow, other times it’s fast. It’s just one of them things I’m afraid.

Without wanting to shoot myself in the foot, I’m going to have to push the ETA till late next month (april) or early May. I’m away on vacation for a couple weeks near the end of April, but I’ll try and get it out as soon as I can.

For those who’ve pledged for physical goods and chanting “WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?!”, well let me explain my plan. My first priority is getting the downloadable game finished and out there. I don’t want to be compiling physical versions until it’s safe to assume there’s no gamebreaking bugs or issues that managed to slip under the radar of the testers.

Thank you for your support, and patience.

I’m flagging a little behind- apologies about that- but I’ve finally put out the Ice Temple build for the tester team. As well as a little personal crisis that set me back, I had to create some new game mechanics and change some systems around for this new temple.

Spud and Prince Charming enter the temple at the request of the local villagers to seek out four children that have gone missing. The aim of the temple is to find them and escort them out to safety.

Testers can find more details in the Tester Team Forum.

The new build containing the Water Temple is ready for the tester team. Details are in the Tester Forum.

I’ve made a music track for the temple- it’s more of a rushed up idea at the moment- but check it out here (excuse the poor audio quality):

If you’re a member of the tester team (+£20 to kickstarter pledge) and haven’t yet done so then you need to 1) register on the forum, then 2) send me a message on Kickstarter with your forum name so I can give you tester forum access and you can get the build. If you’d like to join the team, then we can sort something out with paypal- get in touch.

As always, I look forward to feedback, bug reports, suggestions and ideas.

As you’ve probably noticed, I’ve put up a new site for the game. It’s by no means in a finished state yet, but I’ve added some new message boards for game related chatter. I’ll be quite active on them so throw me your ideas and questions over there.

The game is going fine, I’m just trying to wrap up the Water Temple to put a tester build out in around a week. To fill you in a little, the temple is the second in the game and is submerged deep under the ocean- there’s a kind of Atlantis vibe to it. It’s not all flooded, but progressing through it will mean messing about with the water levels to reach higher up.

For those Kickstarter backers who pledged extra for the Testing or Screen Naming teams you’ll need to 1) register on the forum, then 2) send me a message on Kickstarter with your forum name and which team you pledged extra for, so I can give you access to those specific forums. As a reminder, it was £15 on top of your pledge for the screen team, and £20 for the tester team.