Well, okay, I do become 41 today, but I am not exactly happy, as I am in pretty heavy private problems at the moment, that I don’t wish to go into detail about here on the internet, but I’m noting it because they may slow down the project a bit. It’s hard for me to stay focussed.

I do think though that my birthday is a good moment to summarize the current situation, since today is also the project anniversary.

• 2/3 of the map is done of the last dungeon prior to the final dungeon. This will thus be finished pretty soon.

• There are 2 or 3 more optional dungeons planned. They won’t be anything special,but they will eat some extra time.

• After all that I do, of course have to put up the final boss, and this boss will very like be hard. I don’t just mean the difficulty to fight that boss, but developing this boss is going to be one of the biggest challenges I ever underwent as a game developer, and I hope all of this will work out the way I planned it.

• And then the possibility to start a new “Cycle”. In the new cycle (or “New Game+” if you like), you will keep your levels and all weapon upgrades and stuff, but all enemies will be stronger as well. Item drops in Dungeon may be more powerful though and the cap for weapon upgrades will be raised by 10, so in the first cycle you got 10 upgrades in the second you have 20. The Aurina rate will also be transferred, meaning you can earn more money in the second cycle. I do not expect this process to go without a bug or two, so I’ll have to put some work into this.

• And then of course I need to make sure that all issues on my issue tracker marked “beta” are taken care off before the game goes into the beta.

If there are no more setbacks this beta period should start near the end of this summer, but this is not an official ETA, but a first very rough estimation. During the beta I will also get on the last “polishing” of the game. There is no telling yet when the first “stable” version of the game will be released, but for sure is that we can say “LAND HO!” Oh wait, this is a space travel isn’t it… “PLANET HO!”

Of course, there is a Dutch proverb: “De laatste loodjes wegen het zwaarst” (The last pieces of lead are the heaviest), and the meaning of that proverb is painfully getting clear to me. In combination of the problems I mentioned above, this is killing me, at this moment. BUT, I hate giving up. If I give up now, all my efforts will go to waste and I don’t want THAT!

Hang on with me, and hopefully the world will know soon how the story of Wendicka and Crystal will end.