When will it be done?
Definitely not this year unfortunately. There's a 90% chance of this quest being finished by 2024 though. Trust me, I want to be done with this quest as much as you all do, but quality comes first.
What needs to be done?
This is going to be my biggest quest yet. I already have 20 hours of content and I'm only 60% of the way there. There will be 11 main dungeons in this quest, as well as many optional side dungeons and collectables. There will also be four different characters you can play as temporarily throughout the story.
What's taking so long?
It's true that this is my longest time on a quest yet, with 5-6 years in the making. It's taking long because of a combination of lack of motivation, me getting a job, and other side interests. The latter especially. During my time developing the ROSEMASTER, I got into the Pokémon fangame making community and got heavily sidetracked. It wasn't all a waste though. Being in that community helped improve my art and spriting skills tremendously. Now for the past few months, I'm all in for the ZC dev, especially knowing that I have finished quests before. Will my motivation die out before release? I hope not, but I will try my best to push forward.
Any big changes since the last demo?
If you remembered the last demo, then not much has changed in terms of the level design. However, I plan on massively overhauling the story and polishing up some screens. There is certainly a huge shift in quality from then to now, so expect a better designed quest.
Give me a sneak peak on the latter half of the game!
The latter half of the game is much more character driven and open-ended. There's a ton of side content around this point compared to the fairly linear first half as seen in the demo. Another thing to look out for is the abundance of optional bosses. I had way too much fun making bosses, and I know it may be a big turn off for many people. So just a heads up, this quest will have a lot of optional bosses, as well as a plenty few main ones, too.
Also, I'm streaming my quest dev pretty much daily on the PureZC discord server. You can see my progress every day and I'm more than happy to talk about the ROSEMASTER with you there.
And one more thing, I have a YouTube playlist, that will highlight even more ROSEMASTER gameplay.
This game looks huge, I sure hope I won't get stuck....
Don't worry, one of the things I will promise myself to make after finishing this quest is to make a fanwiki. The wiki will contain a page for all the collectables and how to get them, dungeons and where to go and complete them, enemy/boss guides, and pages for character and story lore. I will also be making official illustrated art for each important character/bosses in the game. (They mostly all OCs aside from Link and Zelda).
What will I do after finishing the ROSEMASTER
Aside from the obvious like checking in to see how everyone feels about the game/updating it. I'm honestly a bit torn. Part of me wants to work on my Pokémon fangame. The other half of me wants to just create my own game and making money off of it since I already have so many OCs. Pretty much the only thing that prevents me from doing that is not being a composer + limited coding knowledge. But I'm sure with enough practice and commissions, I can make a game that can sell. Either way, this is definitely going to be my last major quest for a while.
What can I do to help?
I'm currently looking for some of your OCs I can put in my game as minor cameos. I also need help on polishing up the story and narrative. I already know a few of you willing to do that. So I'm going to work on compiling the story and trying my best to summarize it all.