Minerva Labyrinth - A dark magical girl dungeon crawler

[Jubal]

I think that probably is enough: my general personal preference is that games shouldn't penalise me for doing a build that isn't obviously silly, but like four of the same character class is clearly into the "OK I'm doing something obviously silly now" category.

I guess it also depends on playthrough time a bit. If I'm stuck with a bad decision I made for an hour, that's different to ten hours, which is in turn a very different kettle of fish to being stuck with it for forty.

I'd expect most of your players will take the default party on a first run of the game (and not many players replay many games - some of my all time favourite games I've still never done a second playthrough of - so you're getting into the most "core fans" group for people doing multiple runs and really getting into the party spec system). So I think as long as the default is well balanced, you're unlikely to have any problems.

[Antiquity]

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.

[Jubal]

Just had the Steam email about the release pop up in my inbox. Congrats on getting it out there!

[Antiquity]

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.

[Antiquity]

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.

[Jubal]

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?

[Antiquity]

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.