Mistakes were made....

So... I did it. I had added all the abilities, balanced them, added all the enemies, added 32 levels, and made sure there were no bugs. I did not, however, start a new game and play through for a while without cheating. You see, I'd balanced the abilities so that they were somewhat similar in terms of damage per second with MP cost factored in. So all the basic abilities, such as bow and arrow, fire bolt and rock blast all became weaker. This in turn caused some trouble as I hadn't lowered the enemy HP at all, making them pretty darn tough. This led to hardly anyone getting past level 4 and absolutely no one seeing any of the new enemies.

Yaaayyyy.

I did get some good feedback though and have made changes in the game to fit it. I also got a few write-ups that I want to share here.

Jay @ Rampant Games said

Curtis Mirci showed me the latest build of his shooter-with-RPG-elements, “March to the Moon,” which makes Frayed Knights seem like a downright somber game by comparison. It is still in mid-development and needs work, but I think I was in need of a nice, goofy, fun shooter. I really had fun playing it.

Frayed Knight is the game that he's been working on for four years and finally released. Check it out!

The Pretentious Gamer said

March to the Moon is a top-down shoot-em-up with abilities and experience, set in a bar where you kill lots of rats to start out with. Curtis has been working on the graphics and it looks good (you can wear a skirt and hats!), and he's been working on balancing the abilities so it should be possible to get past the fourth boss. He's planning to sell it on XBLA.

I was very surprised and pleased to hear that it looks very good. After working with Peter on Siphon Spirit it feels like my art is the equivalent of a monkey hitting rocks with a stick.

Greg Squire said

I got a brief look at the progress Curtis has made on his hybrid RPG and vertical shooter. He's been making "crazy" progress on it and he's nearly complete with everything. He's added a bunch more weapons, abilities, and art since I saw it last. Kudos to him for making some rapid progress on this. (Again I'm jealous.) Also I noticed that both Bryan and Curtis are making RPG/Shooter hybrids. Are they working together on something? Hmmmm?

Wait, someone else is making an RPG/Shooter hybrid in the same indie group!? Wish I'd have had a chance to see it while I was there...

Anyways, I got the work done, and that was the important part. I finished adding in the other 64 levels with updated dialogue, monsters that know more abilities and different endings. I spent some time playing the game more and found some bugs to fix so I've been working on those before I add anything new, like the secret unlock. I've also been working hard on getting the PC port to work nicely with the keyboard, and I just got it working tonight.

Currently at 154 hours. That's nearly a month of full-time work. I was planning on finishing this in a month of spare-time work. Guess I'm just not as fast as I thought I was....