Hi there

today I’m here to announce the infinitely infinite delay on Infidemia.

Due to some issues in development, I will likely come back to this in an alternate timeline.

For now, here’s what development looks like:

[Planning Process] –> Complete. Story, characters, all bosses, main gameplay mechanics, done. Every revision is mostly consistent, with some features being redone upon each development cycle.

[Combat System] –> what…? I have redone the combat system at least once for each development cycle. The only things that have stayed the same are the usage of some dialogue-based actions, and combo-based ultimate attacks.

[Map Design] –> Upon my most recent revision of the game, I’ve started redoing map design for overworld areas (outdoors mostly). I designed a full dungeon for use as a tutorial within the story, but now it’s an optional area you can go to at any time, with the story content removed. Most maps have stayed consistent, and so far the game takes place within one city that was not meant to be as large as it is, but, considering how much story goes on there… …maps will likely remain boring and repetitive. I was hoping to go for a more diverse set of landscapes across multiple environments, though I was planning to do that for another game and Infidemia was sort of like that game to begin with, so, map design is a bit tricky here. Dungeons and puzzles take the most time to make.

[Story] –> A combination of pretty much everything… the game itself… is the story.

[Dialogue] –> Dialogue is revised even during writing “finalized” dialogue. The game also has to account for alternate dialogue (sometimes I like to use my alternate revisions for alternate dialogue) based on some specific things (or not so specific… I wanted to keep this a development secret, though players will likely discover this anyway, so…). Rewriting dialogue and writing dialogue in the first place takes probably the most time to do, because I also have to work on the next thing, eventing.

[Eventing] –> Making events that move the player, transition between rooms, characters with icons over their heads as reactions, dialogue, adding character portraits next to dialogue boxes, showing different versions of dialogue boxes… …it’s actually really fast because I’m using an engine that I’m used to developing in and requires minimal programming on my part, though it just takes time, because of the next thing, bugfixing.

[Bugfixing & Playtests] –> This game is probably the glitchiest I have ever played. I played a 3D platformer game and liked how the glitches could be used as mechanics (then, when I actually played the game, I complained about everything being broken… …and sometimes used the glitches to cheat, though sometimes accidental cheating is possible, and… yeah, an option to turn all the glitches in the game on or off would have been fun, but, that’s not how it works.) Unfortunately, Infidemia’s mechanics of characters staring into walls, jumping on tables, sliding (moving across the screen while looking frozen), battles with broken dialogue or with various other game-breaking things that literally make the game unplayable (sometimes failing to load a resource), which can all freeze the game. By playtesting, I’ve been able to fix many bugs, add new quality changes, and test things out on paper before I playtest the game to make sure eventing works right, and, although it takes more time, the game is slightly… slightly getting there. To being less buggy (sort of). I’ve kept records of every glitch and bug in the game, mostly as video captures, and intend to create a compilation later.

[Battle Eventing] –> Sort of like dialogue + eventing + combat system. Every battle requires some eventing from me, though boss fights require a lot more (only the tutorial boss is fully evented) and the game’s battle eventing is why battles are currently unplayable. Sometimes story is done through battle eventing, though this is mostly just to use the dialogue-based mechanics that you can use during battle.

[Development Cycle] –> Everything noted above is part of one development cycle. Infidemia’s development cycle goes from a loop of this (to whatever part of the story. One version of the game is at the beginning with a few minutes of gameplay, another is all the way until the next chapter, and one is halfway through a chapter, while another is stuck at a boss fight… actually, that’s the one until the next chapter…) until I decide to restart development (keeping the resources I used/made before, often restarting all dialogue and eventing though, except for map design travel events that swap the player’s location). The game has gone through multiple development cycles so far and none of them are past the prototype stage. I will be pausing development until my mindset improves enough to actually go with something I have started and not restart it for each time I notice something went wrong.

I have a demo version of the game that is [sort of] ready, and will probably release it within the next 10 years.

Thank you for your interest and support,

-ZoruaAl

Oh, yeah, forgot to mention…

Infidemia’s still being developed right now.

I just don’t know when I’ll be done.

I hope to get the main battle theme redone soon also.

I worked on doing custom instruments for the main battle theme for a month, though was unhappy with it every time, so, might redo everything for music as well, at least, everything for main battle music.

Please note that I am inexperienced when it comes to making games and even if/when I finish Infidemia, it will likely be a very low quality game with badly scripted dialogue, a boring combat system, and the worst story ever made. I am expecting to make a terrible game because of reasons and because I know I’m overambitious. The game might be two hours long, but, after only having less than two minutes completed across one year of development, I will likely return to the project in an alternate timeline.

Thanks for reading this, though.