Well...
This game has ballooned since I last posted any updates of real content. Each day the game has grown extensively. In fact to save myself a lot of play testing time... I created a cell phone in the game for my own use that allows me to warp, disable enemies, enable them, and jump to "episodes."
EPISODES
There are 5 episodes... episodes are the extensive parts of the main quest. By the time the game is done I hope there will be 50 episodes. Completing the 5 episodes takes me around 90 minutes and I am using the cell phone to warp around for testing purposes.
The episodes varry greatly and encompass... monster killing, dating, dancing, dealing with hostile lizards (Andarans), escaping Oni in a thrilling chase, seeing a world get ripped apart in a way that no old school RPG has ever had (it's been described as intense), picking your classes to develop your character, seeing monks get attacked by raiders, stealth in evading and saving a girl that falls from the sky.
SIDE QUESTS
There are about 16 side quests so far. With these side quests and 5 episodes the game totals 3 hours and 30 minutes of play time! That is without travel and without monster battles (except bosses and must do battles). With battles and travel time it would probably be 5 hours and 30 minutes to do the side quests so far.
Oh yeah and there are 7 puzzle quests. They aren't really quests, but puzzles that require hints so there is someone to give those hints. There are more puzzles, but with these 7 puzzles... you will learn how to solve the other puzzles in the game.
FACTIONS
There is 1 new dark guild for those players that like creating mischief! But be warned hang with the wrong company and it does affect you. The quests for the Den of Darkness are absolutely quirky when they are not simplistic in nature. Some quests are easy everything from find this and bring that to the nun hunt and releasing an oni fro a bottle in a pub!
The quests for the guild of fighters are done now, quests that varry from rescue missions, to escorts, to flat out killing things and challenging the bare fisted barbarian to one on one combat.
JOIN THE DARK SIDE, BE HATED, LOVED or FEARED
Now that I have played more than three hours into the game, I have gotten to see alliances develop, fears take shape, hatred grow and love dye. My character is now so hated in one of my 2 test games that the evil NPCs do not see me as a threat... they see me as one of them! Normally evil NPCs would attack on instinct, but if you are less prestiegeous than they are they will talk with you.
On a mission to accompany a man to get back his wife held by raiders. The raiders spoke to me and offered gold to abandon the mission.
NPCs accept duels based on their hatred for you, or refuse out of fear of what you will do to them!
SO MUCH IN A SMALL AREA
There are only about 15 areas. 1 town, 1 port, 1 castle, 1 village, 1 lighthouse, 3 bridges, 3 woods, 1 mire, 2 caves, 1 shrine. There are more areas, but they are not accessable at any time in the game. I would like to get the game to about 100 areas, but these 15 areas already contain about 120 maps, so I am not sure if it will be possible if the engine has a limit of 999 maps.
CLASS CATAGORIES
I have about 60 classes lined up in the game, and everything does evolve. There are three primary groups of classes. Combat, Magic and Stealth.
The combat branch starts everyone out as a brawler. Untrained with weapons and armor, but good with power and strength. They can upgrade to a Fighter and get trained with weapons and armor.
The next catagory is magic, where everyone starts out as a mage learning basic magic before they break off into other catagories. Black magic, white magic and illusion. From there it goes to even more detailed magical classes.
The final catagory is stealth where everyone starts out as a thief. The stealth catagory primarily relies on yep... stealth. Picking locks, conceiling themselves, picking pockets and stealing things.
QUIRKY CLASSES
Beyond the stereotypes there are quirky classes with their own powers. Such as the grappler, who cannot use any weapons, instead the grappler uses strength with skills. It takes a few levels for the grappler to learn moves, or even get strong with them, but the grappler is a slow, mythodical combatant capable of having entertaining fights. So entertaining and crowd pleasing there is a new combatant system. Instead of duels where the point is to kill your opponent, the point is to have an entertaining battle. A crowd pleasing battle that will give the spectators their money's worth.
Another quirky chracter is the gambler with unique skills and some other skills taken from another famous game gambler. The gambler allows the player to take a chance with fate as all of the gambler's skills are either good or bad. It just so happens to be luck of the draw with skills like the card draw that will have one of fifty-two random effects on opponents. The skill of coin toss will damage either the player's party or the monster party and the list goes on with skills, blackjack, roulette, slots, and the gambletron. I would go into detail, but this is long enough.
MULTIPLE PARTIES and MULTIPLE CHARACTERS
Because the game takes place on a few different planes of reality, there are different parties for different planes. The dream plane, the dead plane, the plane of the living known as Terrenia and the undead world of Hemonia. There are four parties at any given time that either through sleep, death, a cut scene or reality you get to play as them. Some are for a brief moment, others are for quests and the main one is your playing party on Terrenia.
On Terrenia there are many characters that will join your party. Either for dates, missions, quests, but once you have completed the initial quest where you meet the person you can have them join your party full time assuming that they like you enough. Each character gives you full control of them and they grow and change as you do in the game.
MULTIPLE CHOICE QUEST-IONS
Like the previous Maia games. There is more than one way to complete a quest. Take for instance one quest where you must get an emerald...
A. Steal the emerald from the owner by either turning invisible, or breaking into his house late at night.
B. Kill the owner and steal the emerald.
C. Date him and have other members of your party steal the emerald for you.
Each quest has one or two ways to complete them! Some even have different outcomes based on your success, failure... or even taking an alternative to doing what you are supposed to. Like getting by villains to kill who you are supposed to protect.
DIALOG O PLENTY
Every dialog is written out before it is put into the game and so far there is 110 pages of dialog! That is almost a full length movie. Technically it is more than a full length movie considering movies have actions and details written out. This is just 110 pages of dialog.
Discord
Light Style