Another week of working on the game, so here’s what I’ve added:

• Boss mechanics
  To put this another way, specific actions and events that happen per boss fight, making these fights more unique but also focused on a primary mechanic
• Wager abilities
  New ways to talk your way out of battle have been added, a new ability that I won’t talk about right now though required quite a bit of eventing to do is working
• Tutorials
  Images have been added to mostly every tutorial by now… …This is to make using the menu more clear, and to help me use it as reference when explaining things through text only.
• Story
  The introduction is going along and I already decided to change the plot up. Starting over the intro a lot gives me a better idea on how the game world really works, so I hope this keeps players interested.
• Temporary content rating
  This game may not be suitable for children to play, not sure about recommended ages/content ratings specifically, adding a disclaimer in case.
• Map design
  The tutorial area, a few new optional areas, a shop, and the first café for the game, have all been added. Editing some events in a dungeon I made before to use it as part of gameplay in another area, so the player still ends up doing the puzzles there and such. I’ve added a reset button to one puzzle so far though I should probably do that for more…
• Puzzles
  A lot of the game is top-down, 2D, left/right and up/down, so I’ve been adding (more) puzzles to the game. Kind of like another fun thing to do in dungeons instead of constant battles, though I have been trying to update the battle system.
• Characters
  Introduced someone, have an optional introduction as well as other characters you may be able to meet earlier than usual. This includes characters who are part of the core story…
  …Still using friendship levels in the game though haven’t found many places to add them yet. Most actions from the introduction may look inconsequential.
• Skippable tutorials
  Want to learn how to play on your own? Following another guide? Already know how to play? Regardless of how long a tutorial is, I’ve noticed these can be a bit too long to have to go through and playtest multiple times, so I added an option to skip tutorials, though this should be usable by the player (especially if you get a game over in the tutorial area).
• New dialogue/script
  I don’t usually keep the content that was written as part of the earlier script, though anything that’s part of the original script and left in the game now has been modified to work with any characters currently in your party, hopefully slightly shorter to go through, and partially consistent with the story.
• Story inconsistencies
  This is part of the gameplay.
• Intentional weird stuff
  You may not want to report bugs/glitches for this game, since anything that happens should be normal. In the case of glitches going on there are some ways that I’ve added events in-game to account for this (how’d you get [item] so early?).
• Useful stuff
  Selecting different options when given multiple choices about something when you’re supposed to read each choice no longer forces you to exit out of the event. This makes more sense while playing, but, let’s say you’re asked to review the instructions for a mechanical device, and there are separate categories of instructions, but after viewing one, you have to restart that event to get to the next event, making it take longer…
  …In summary, trying to fix these kinds of things.
  However, boss encounters and random boss encounters have not offered the player many options to redo the fight and will usually result in a game over.
  I intend to add more save points than usual to account for that, though these save points will be in areas where you’re not forced to start the battle.
  You can save anywhere in the game, though this creates some issues:
  –> Glitch potential
  You can go inside of puzzle obstacles that move.
  –> Battle encounters…
  You might end up fighting enemies multiple times (though there should be a cooldown on after an enemy was defeated, because enemies walk around the map, usually)
  –> Right before a boss fight
  You might have to go through the whole boss fight or get a game over in it in order to change your save point. While you wouldn’t be restarting from your last save, it would still take a while.
  –> Multiple save files
  If you want to experiment with your choices in the game, this is a good way to do it, though it may make gameplay more confusing. Maybe this isn’t an issue, but an opportunity for the player to explore the game more?
  –> Saving inside of story events
  Regardless of your choices in the game, there are some story events that require the player to go through the whole thing before doing different things. While you could hypothetically leave those areas and come back to them, it’s usually better to do one of these events all the way through first, but if you’d like to record your progress while in the event, this may work better (as you can save anywhere).
  Unlike saving anywhere, the player doesn’t restore health and other resources by saving. More updates on healing and reviving characters will be added later.

Anyway, that’s it for this development update. I tried a list format instead of using an introduction paragraph, so I hope that’s a quick read.

Thanks for reading this update.

-ZoruaAl