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I'm "stuck" with the old RPG Maker, but it's the one I'm quite comfortable with now, so I'm not planning to upgrade. But I wasn't aware of problems in Windows, can you give me some examples? I have 10, and everything runs fine for me.

It forces my desktop to 640x480, pushes all of my open applications to an inactive display, and makes a fuss whenever I alt-tab.  The aspect ratio may or may not be correct, depending on my current projection mode and which monitor it's on.  It also doesn't detect my gamepads at all, so I'm running it through Steam Input.

Any older RPG Maker game behaves this way for me.  Do you not have any issues like these?

I think it's at least a bit bigger.  I finished the first in about twelve hours (a good chunk of which was just the Black Castle), and I'm already past that here.  More importantly though, I think it feels bigger.  There are more varied events and locations covering more ground, and it feels like more of a journey, whereas the first game felt pretty local and contained.  In terms of scope, I think it's plenty big enough for a commercial game.  Certainly many aren't even as big.

Honestly the main thing that I think brings it down from a commercial perspective is that the RPG Maker version is (I guess) pretty old, so it lacks any QoL features and doesn't cooperate with Windows very well.

I get not wanting to deal with self-promotion, though.  I experimented with that with ML, I hated doing even as little as I did, and I accomplished nothing from it.  I still plan to release my next major game commercially, but I'll probably just put it out there and not stress too much.

What kind of goals did you have for this game as a followup to the first one?

Looking forward to seeing what you come up with!

Are you intending something that's quite visually/setting-wise similar to ML or are you shifting on that front as well?

The two settings I'm interested in right now are the ML setting and my tech fantasy setting, which I still don't have a good name for.  The latter I think needs more technical groundwork though, and would also need a huge amount of new art that is daunting to think about (things like different playable species portraits, totally different monster sprites, and maybe outdoor tile sets).  I would also probably adjust the skill system somewhat to better fit the theme, but I'm not sure how just yet.  So, most likely I will be making ML2.  I don't know if I am ready to write a direct sequel, so I am thinking of making a very distant prequel.  I have some ideas for that.

I've started working on my next game.  I have been doing some tentative spreadsheet design work for a while, but I just started the new code base last week.  There are a lot of upgrades and revisions that I want to make, and I'm getting through them pretty quickly so far.  Bigger levels, cleaner rules, expanded equipment, and a streamlined workflow in Godot are some of my goals for this project.

It actually feels really good to start a new project with a good solid base.  ML1 grew out of Tower of Metal, but that was really just rudimentary groundwork.  This time I have a complete and polished framework to start with, and that is really helping me iterate quickly on new features and technical improvements.

Just finished False Skies, a pseudo-GBC-styled JRPG with a complicated class system.  It's overly long and mechanically finicky, but a good game with a lot of varied content, if you have 60+ hours to spend on it.

I am probably giving up on Labyrinth of Galleria, about 80 hours in.  I loved the previous game, Labyrinth of Refrain, but Galleria just feels like it's constantly wasting my time.  I wrote a Steam review that goes into detail, but the short version is that actual content (the dungeon) is far too small to support or justify such a long, drawn-out story.  The pacing is terrible and the gameplay is heavily padded.  I've been looking forward to playing this for quite a while, so I am pretty disappointed.

I never got into Solasta partly because it felt like you needed about eight DLCs to get all the basics of the game down.

For what it's worth, I played Solasta vanilla, had a great time, and didn't feel like I was missing out on anything.  However, I tend not to use weird classes like druids and warlocks in the first place, so your mileage may vary.

Your work looks really cool.  I have gained a new appreciation for art of all kinds after seeing the mindless garbage that AI churns out.

At my end, I started playing a bit of The Temple of Elemental Evil, but haven't got far with it yet. The characters are a bit characterless, which is often a problem in make-your-own-whole-party RPGs, but hopefully the narrative will be interesting when I get into it more.

ToEE was one of the best tabletop conversions at the time, but turn-based has made a big comeback since then.  How does it hold up against newer games like Solasta or Wrath of the Righteous?

I've been gorging on (mostly indie) games since Minerva Labyrinth released.  I won't list them all, but there were a couple that came out on the same day as ML that I really liked.  Idosra: The Electric Renaissance is a platforming action-RPG with influences from the classic cinematic platformers, and Pepper Odyssey is a surreal survival adventure-RPG with a unique visual style.  Both are great and worth your time.

My splurge for the Steam winter sale was Tevi, a bullet hell Metroidvania and semi-sequel to Rabi-Ribi.  I like it a lot so far.  Also checking out King's Bounty II from my backlog, which I'm also enjoying.  I'm not sure why it gets so much hate, but maybe I'll find out.  It is definitely a step in a different direction, but I feel like the core formula is still there.

There's an indie JRPG dungeon crawler called Empire Reunited that I helped playtest.  I played through once in November and a second time this past week.  I really enjoyed its no-filler playtime and good balance of challenge and story, and it's been fun watching it improve from its early state.

Dungeon Antiqua 2 came out, but I haven't played it yet.  I really liked the first one, so I'm looking forward to it.

I've had some letdowns as well, but I feel weird calling out tiny indie games and this post is probably long enough, so I guess I'll leave those for now.

Thank you!  It feels strange to release something that I have been working on for so long.  Almost five years, off and on.  I'm eager to start working on a new dungeon crawler, which hopefully will not take quite so long to finish.

Spoiler

Looking forward to Barbara Gaiden.  I used the hairpin to get out of jail.  I didn't find the secret passage, but I saved the dog, got the Blancmange spell, and planted the sunflower at home.

I gave Adele the counterattack accessory most of the time to use with her taunt skill (this helped a lot with the escape fight in particular) and gave everyone else Fit Bits.  The castle was pretty short actually, I was expecting it to be longer, so I over-prepared quite a bit before entering.  I never sold the other ancient wine since I wasn't sure if it would have another use.

Just pushed the really definitely final (barring catastrophe) launch version and got everything set up for release.  There's more that I want to do, but it can wait a little while.  If I happen to get any feedback from players, that will help me know better what to focus on.  For now, it's time to just leave it alone for a few days and do something else.  I spent a while yesterday playing some indie games (including EntangledPear's TSFTAMO) and leaving feedback/reviews, something I haven't been able to do much of during this ten-month development crunch.

My goal at the beginning of the year was to release it in 2025.  That ended up being really hard, because the game turned out to need a lot more refinement and tuning than I anticipated.  All of that has served to make it a better game, but I haven't done very much else with my free time all year.

I probably put too much pressure on myself, because nobody would have died if I had pushed it to 2026, but I was adamant about not doing that.  Five years is long enough to hold onto this project.  I'm excited to release it, but I am also ready to let it go and start thinking about my next project.

Finished!  My time was about 12:30 at levels 27-28.  The final boss wasn't too bad.  I liked the ending.  Barbara was my favorite character.

I don't have too much to add to what I've said before, but it's overall a nice solid adventure that's not too long or difficult.  The investigative elements, attention to detail in the world, and basis in real-world fairytales are some of the distinguishing aspects that I enjoyed.  The latter especially gives it a particular sort of vibe; I am probably not familiar with most of the stories referenced in the game, but old fairytales have a specific kind of oddness about them, and this felt authentic to that (the subplot about the rock king especially sounded like a real-world story).  Another game that gave me similar vibes in that respect was Operencia, another RPG based on European folklore, especially Hungarian I think, although I don't know what else they might have pulled from.  Incidentally, in that one, you also have to bring sunlight back to the land.  Was that inspired by a specific story?

About that point of no return again:

Spoiler

I was thinking that an easy way to improve this (should you decide to do so) would be to just set it on first entering the tower, instead of after talking to the witch.  The characters can give a warning before entering that they won't be leaving after this point.  This way, it is clearly telegraphed to the player, and you don't have to add new dialogue to all the NPCs.

Also, I forgot that there were both Spanish flies and fly agaric.  I never found fly agaric, either.  I checked the guide on your Itch page and it says they are mushrooms from Death's forest?  I never noticed that there were mushrooms to collect there.

Something that I've been thinking about from the beginning is: how far should I go to make the game beatable with as many party builds as possible, while still being at least somewhat challenging for more optimal builds?  Being able to grind up levels helps with this, but you can only get so powerful.  The last boss especially is rather demanding.  I may have to raise the level cap to allow a bit more headroom at the end of the game.  I've never had to reach the current cap to finish the game, though, even with a party with no healers.

I'm currently attempting to play through with five Life characters, which is a bit like a 4x white mage run in Final Fantasy.  My rules are a bit more flexible than that, so I've built to try to put out as much damage as I can without any offensive skills.  I'm not sure that I can actually finish the game like this, but if I can, it still doesn't prove that all builds are winnable, or even that all 5x Life builds are winnable.

I do not want to add respec options, partly for story reasons and partly because I really want your party build to be what you play from start to finish, FF1-style, with all the ups and downs that come from matching a particular build against the game's various challenges.  The default party is fully capable of winning the game, and there are ample warnings at character creation if your party is missing certain capabilities.  Maybe that's enough?

I'm still in crunch mode on my own game, so I haven't been able to finish just yet, but I will soon.

I forgot about the flies.  That mystified me since I couldn't find them anywhere, but I had resolved to just move on without it.  Good to know that I won't need it.

I don't think a third meditation is necessary, I just wondered if I had missed it.  It's fine to have it only available twice so that you have to choose who gets it.