The first stage of development is almost done now. Still got a couple things left to do (one more skill set for a character & generic items) but very soon I'll have no choice but to move on to my most feared thing - map design. Map design in RPG Maker is not something I enjoy doing. I find it difficult to create visually pleasing or interesting environments unlike in the Source engine, where you have way more options available (and a third dimension).

It might help if I find some other tilesets that work with the default ones, but at the minute I'm finding the whole experience to be painful. I've tried designing a few areas already and I just don't find it engaging or interesting. If I want to see the game through to completion, I'll have no choice but to do it. What I'm trying to say is don't expect the maps in the final game to be visually interesting. I'll try my best, but I can't promise anything.

I'll likely design the maps in a very basic fashion first and then go heavy on details later to speed up the process for now anyway, so if I show any maps at any point and they look awful then it's important to understand that it will be in no way indicative of the final game.

...hopefully.

Also, the new, final title for the game is Inkagafar: Tenebris Dominus. Just thought I'd throw that out there amidst my mapping crisis.

As the battle system is fairly close to being complete(ish) I can say that it uses 6 party members at once. I think this will make battles more interesting than a 3/4 party system but needs additional balancing because you can output 5 people's worth of damage at a time. The battle system also uses two different skill systems, Breaks which are used by melee characters and Energy, which is basically mana.

Out of the 4 Energy characters they all have different skills using it making each one unique with their own strengths and weaknesses.

I probably could've come up with a way to make the melee characters more unique but I struggled to come up with 4 unique skill sets as is, so the melee ones all use the same set of Breaks. I mean hell, I still haven't finished one of the characters skills yet. That'll be my priority before moving on to anything else as I want to make sure the gameplay is enjoyable, fluid, and in-depth. My reason for this is so that if the other aspects of the game are lacking then the gameplay itself should be interesting enough to keep the players interested. I've always been a big believer in gameplay over everything else, which makes an RPG difficult to make in that regard.

What I mean by that is that you can't really have an RPG with fantastic gameplay and an awful story, and you can't have an RPG with awful gameplay and a fantastic story. They both need to be interesting and engaging enough for the player to invest the time to see the end. I like to think the final game will manage that with how long the story has brewing for and with the amount of focus I'm giving the gameplay the only real aspect that will be lacking is the map design (hopefully), but I won't know if I've succeeded until the game is done.

In the end I really won't know how good the game is until it's out and people can actually download it. I've just got to hope that I'm doing the right thing and that everything I've got actually does work together to make a compelling experience.