Hello, and welcome to the first on a monthly update log for Untold Story. As Untold Story winds down development, I want to put out a post every month to go over the progress made, how close the end of development is, and just keep everyone up to date on what's going on.  I'll also try to share something new every month as well. There's a lot about this game I've kept hidden so there's many many things to tell you all about!

Development Progress

As of now, Untold Story is a -beatable- game. As in, you can select New Game and go all the way to the final boss. That said, it is not finished by any means. Everything within the final chapter is simply a placeholder at this point, so while you can fight the final boss, it is not actually a boss fight. Essentially, the end of the game is just a skeleton, an outline for what is to come that needs to be filled with meat. 

Untold Story is divided up into chapters. There are a total of 10 Chapters, plus a Prologue and an Epilogue. Currently, I have to finish the skeleton for Chapter 10, as well as create the entire Epilogue. This involves creating side quests, finishing dungeons including the enemies and bosses, and a whole lot of dialogue. 

At the same time, I am also completing another Playtest of the game, which includes going through the entire game start to finish, doing everything (aka 100%) to check for errors, typos, what works, what doesn't, etc. Right now that playtest is at Chapter 3. I take vigorous notes on what to change or how I can improve it. My last playtest took around 40 hours, and that was with the back half being only a skeleton. With everything included, I can see this game taking around ~50 hours to 100%, though I can't say for certain until everything is actually done. 

I plan to repeat this process (Playtest > Fix > Playtest etc) until I feel satisfied with the final product. In addition, I do plan on having 3 different difficulties to play on. 

Story Mode will focus solely on story, allowing players to simply bypass combat. It would basically be a visual novel at that point lo.

Standard Mode is how the game is meant to be played aka how I'm designing it.

Hard Mode is nearly identical to standard mode, with one key difference. Untold Story is designed around a 5-Person party. Hard mode will simply reduce that party limit to 3. While it may not sound like much, losing two entire party members in battle creates a huge shift in how you must go about fighting. 

How Much Longer?

I'm only including this just to see how my answers change (or don't) lol. My goal was by the end of this year, and that is technically possible, but...I don't think it'll happen. That said, and this is the reason I'm starting this monthly update log, I want this game DONE by June 2025. That will be the 10 year mark from when I originally began this project. Come hell or high water, Untold Story will be finished within a year. 

Something New

Anyone who played the horribly outdated "Demo Version" that I've since taken down will remember "DP" or "Decisive Points". Those are gone, and instead, it is now Energy Points, or EP for short. Every single action requires Energy, even your basic attack. At a default, basic attacks and the like require 5 EP (Characters start a battle with 20 EP), while more powerful skills require more. However, characters naturally GAIN 5 EP every turn as well. Basically, doing basic moves will keep you around the same EP.

Equipment can change these values, as seen above. Some equipment can give more EP a turn, or give LESS EP. Likewise, some equipment can even cause actions to cost either less or more EP. At it's core, the Energy system is a way to prevent players from simply spamming the strongest attacks (unless you've got the right set up!). It's a very simple system that I hope I designed a lot of interesting mechanics around. 

That's All

I've gotten all I care to say in this first monthly update log. I just wanted to share with everyone that this game IS still being worked on, and that we're incoming the final year or LESS. I'll update again in June and hopefully have some good news to share! Until then, thank you everyone.